


The Somerton Man

by Edhla



Series: After the Fall [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-16
Updated: 2013-10-22
Packaged: 2017-12-29 14:23:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 47,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1006467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Edhla/pseuds/Edhla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An unidentified corpse. An untraceable poison. An indecipherable code... and the arrival of the littlest Watson.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sequel to The Parson's Son. If you want in on the ground floor of this series continuation/soon to be AU, the first fic is 'After the Fall.'
> 
> This, like The Parson's Son, is based on a real life case, and this one uses a lot less artistic license. In 1948, a dead man was found on Somerton Beach, South Australia, with the printed words "tamam shud" and a mysterious code in his pocket. To this day his identity and cause of death remain a mystery. All details of the body in this fic are, so far as I could make them, as they were in real life. So is the code, which has to date never been deciphered. If you think you've got it, NASA would like to hear from you.
> 
> It being slightly unrealistic and a bit of a logistical nightmare to take our boys to Australia, this is now set in a different Somerton- in Somerset.

The mosquitos and midges weren't bothering him.

He was sitting on the bank of the river; upright, leaning against a tree, with his hat slouched low over his forehead. His head was tilted lazily to one side, and there was a cigarette tucked behind his right ear; another lay balanced between his chin and shoulder. A white cotton shirt, tucked in with due regard for decorum; but he wore no jacket or tie. His trousers were too big for him. Nondescript shoes. No wallet or keys. Ginger hair curling around his elfin-looking ears and blue eyes that gazed across the river and yet saw nothing, because he was dead.

This was the way the Somerton Man was discovered, at nine in the morning on what was already shaping up to be the hottest July day in living memory.

* * *

"Can't you turn up the fan, John?"

"No, Harry, I can't," John responded. "For a start, it doesn't go any higher than that, and if it did, it would probably fly off the ceiling altogether and somebody would get killed in the resulting accident."

The weather was no less stifling in London that morning. John hadn't done a tour of Afghanistan for nothing and was largely unbothered by the ridiculous weather (he hated the cold more), but Harry, who had come around because her own house didn't even have a ceiling fan, had been at him for the past hour, as if he could somehow control the weather. She was lying sprawled out on the floorboards under the aforementioned ceiling fan. Half of her conversation was complaining about the heat, and the other half was directed at Molly, who was on the nearby sofa with her bare feet up and a laptop on her knees.

It was all of day three of Molly's maternity leave, and already things were not boding well for the six months she'd originally intended to take off. She had worked long weeks- sometimes fifty and occasionally sixty hours- since her university days, and even on her honeymoon she'd regularly called the lab to check up on her suspended projects and make sure her temporary replacement wasn't rearranging everything in her absence. Six months was, John knew, a concept she was having trouble getting her head around. She'd started time on the computer that morning organising spreadsheets; some pointless filing, so far as John understood it, but it was keeping her amused. As he leaned over to pass her a glass of water, he glanced at the screen and saw she'd moved on to a website of rather patronising pastel colours.

"Daniel," she suddenly said. Harry lifted her head.

"Before I comment, is that a family name or otherwise of sentimental value to you?"

"No."

"Then I hate it. The only Daniel I've ever known was a complete prick."

John silently conceded the point. Daniel Hurst from back home _had_ been a complete prick, and he wasn't keen on his firstborn sharing a name with the kid from school whose hobbies included beating up girls- or trying to, as Harry regularly came off best when they scrapped. Harry wasn't familiar with Dan Tate, an old army 'friend' of John's; but on reflection, Dan Tate was a bit of a prick, too.

"Caleb?"

"Depends."

"On what?"

"On whether you want him to grow up to be a cricket player. If not, I'd probably give that one a miss. Besides, either you two know something I don't or you haven't even really _thought_ of girl's names."

Despite regular accusations to the contrary toward both parents, Baby Watson's gender was still a genuine mystery. John, who was in the kitchen tidying up after a late breakfast, was about to point out that they'd already decided on a girl's name months before when the front door clinked and then opened with some force.

"Good morning, Sherlock," John greeted him without even turning around. Because nobody else, absolutely nobody else in the world, made that kind of noisy dramatic entrance when he was in a mood. As Sherlock entered the kitchen, though, John did a double-take.

"Oh, for God's sake," he blurted out. "You do own short-sleeved shirts, Sherlock. I'm pretty sure I've seen at least one. Are you _trying_ to give yourself heat stroke?"

Sherlock, still dressed in his usual black suit and silk shirt, ignored this. He went to the sink, filled a glass of water, and then dumped the contents over his hair, shaking it out like a terrier. "I'm fine," he announced, as if the tap-water had been a fix-all.

John, with a heavy sigh, went to the laundry for the mop. "I just heard on the radio that it's hit thirty already," he commented over his shoulder. "How's Mrs. Hudson coping in this?"

"Sheltering at the library."

"Should have gone with her."

"I did, yesterday." Sherlock ignored the implications of John's remark. "Half the children in London were there, shrieking and getting their grubby hands all over everything."

"So I take it that's a 'no' on the regular babysitting job on offer, then. What about Smudge?"

"Smudge is the _cat,_ John."

"Not what I asked."

Sherlock's response was a withering glance. He filled the glass again and made his way into the living room, stopping in the doorway.

"Hi, Sherlock," Molly greeted him calmly. She was still clicking away at the laptop.

"Molly," he said, in tones that were clearly attempting to be as pleasant as possible, at least when he knew he was in John's earshot. "You're looking very-"

He stopped. John, who had just come in and was trying not to trip over his sister on the way over to his armchair, gave him a brief warning glance. He'd been "at" Sherlock that week already about the various expressions he'd been using to describe Molly recently. Sitting down, he could practically see Sherlock mentally striking out various adjectives, one by one.

"You're looking well," he finally said with effort, glancing briefly at John.

"Thank you," was the listless response.

This had been a new progression over the past few weeks- Molly and Sherlock could now sit in the living room together and have a stiff-but-civilised conversation.

That embarrassing courtesy over, Sherlock turned his attention to Harry instead.

"Harriet." He knew it grated on Harry's nerves to be addressed by her real name. She was still sprawled on the floor, like one of the cats; lazily, she rolled over and looked at him.

"Sherlock," was her response. "We meet again. You look ridiculous. Who the hell wears a jacket on a day like this?"

* * *

Lestrade, who had driven to work that morning and was now basking in the air conditioning in his office, was already getting tired of hearing it: So _rry I'm going to be late, sir. Tube's broken down. Bus was full, had to wait for the next one-_

 _Bloody_ Tube. Whose idea was it, anyway, to use carriages made in Germany, ones that broke down like that under the stress of a bit of heat?

Still, it could have been worse. _He'd_ made it in, and he had the air conditioning for now. He'd just got word that another train was stuck on the tracks near Waterloo- not safe to let anyone on or off. Which wouldn't have been that much of a drama- except that it was peak-hour and crowded, and no engine also meant no air conditioning. Murtagh and Barber were both stuck on that train, and Thompson had called in sick, which pretty much guaranteed it.

Somebody, somewhere, was about to be found horribly dead.

Jacob Dyer had been very much on time that morning, however. On time and annoyingly keen to work- he'd reported for duty and taken to the overnight incident reports with a smile on his face, which Lestrade didn't entirely trust.

The terrible thing about it was this: Jake was a genuinely nice kid, who made Hayley happy and treated her well. She'd been brave about it a few weeks before, and they'd come clean about it together. Lestrade had to admire them for that much, anyway.

"Rough morning, sir," Jake commented with a wry little grin. "Just heard from Barber. They think they're going to be at least another hour of it."

"Lucky them."

"Wouldn't say that, sir. I'd much rather be here."

"Jake." Lestrade dropped the formality of the Force for a second. "Look, I appreciate the effort you made to get in here and do your job, especially when so many have called in late or aren't coming in at all. But you don't need to overdo it."

"I'm really not, sir," he insisted. He had a straight face, but Lestrade, glancing up, saw the twitch at each end of his lips.

"Okay," he said, trying to hide his own smile. "What's happened?"

"I shouldn't laugh. Some poor old woman's not doing so well on the train. Threw up on Barber. I'd much sooner be here working than getting thrown up on."

"You and me both. You still don't have to overdo it, though." Lestrade was about to say more when the phone on his desk rang. Groaning in spirit, he reached over to answer it.

 _Great_. This was it. The wonderful murder they were currently too understaffed and ill-equipped to deal with.

"Dyer, I swear I will sell my firstborn child if it'll guarantee this phone call isn't going to result in some major awful investigation," he commented, fingers resting on the handset.

"I'd much prefer it if you didn't do that, sir."

"You would, wouldn't you." Lestrade sighed and picked up the receiver defeatedly. "Lestrade."

* * *

"Sherlock Holmes."

John, who'd finally had a chance to pick up the morning paper, rolled his eyes. There'd been a time when he thought Sherlock's habit of answering his phone with his frankly bizarre name was... kind of cool, actually. By now, he was over the novelty and was instead keeping a running tally of how often Sherlock picked up with his name, and how often with "hello." This one was probably Lestrade; Sherlock liked to answer the phone with "Sherlock Holmes" when he suspected he was being summoned. John gave half his attention to the newspaper on his lap, while keeping an ear out as Sherlock paced up and down melodramatically.

Lestrade had found himself a body. Or at least, someone had.

"Where...? Where's that?"

And it had been found in some godawful little provincial outpost, judging by the fact that _Mr. Googlemaps_ didn't even know where it was.

"Bit outside your jurisdiction, isn't it? What's so unusual about this one?"

John lifted his head, blatantly listening in. Sherlock clicked his fingers urgently, and John picked up a pen from the coffee table beside him and threw it to him. "Okay," he said down the line, uncapping the pen with his teeth. "Say that again. Case sensitive, gaps, everything."

"Sherlock, what the hell-!"

It was too late to stop him. John put his head in his hands. "Oh my God," he murmured. "You did that. You really did that."

Sherlock had once before written a note on the wall at Baker Street, not long after John had moved in there. Obviously a habit he hadn't grown out of. Sherlock had by now wandered out to the kitchen, still talking; with a sigh, John got up to see what was so urgent that it just had to be written on his living room wall.

* * *

**_Tamam Shud_ **

**WRGOABABD**

**~~MLIAOI~~ **

**WTBIMPANETP**

**MLIABOAIAQC**

**ITTMTSAMSTGAB**


	2. Code

"Okay, so do you want to go ahead and explain the random vandalism?" John asked, as Sherlock finally hung up the line and wandered back into the living room as if nothing odd or out-of-place had happened. "You know, you could have asked for _paper_ -"

"That was Lestrade." Sherlock was clearly relishing every syllable of the reveal, a sure sign he was absolutely delighted in whatever little problem had just presented itself for a solution. "A dead man was found on the banks of the River Cary early this morning."

John sighed. "And I'm guessing there's no River Cary anywhere in London."

"Somerset. Just outside a little place called Somerton. This -" Sherlock pointed to his handiwork - "was found on a torn-off scrap of paper in the dead man's pocket _. Tamam Shud_ was printed on one side. This code was handwritten on the other. I think if we looked it up -"

"It is finished," John muttered.

"... What?"

John shook himself. "Just... thinking out loud," he explained. "Tamam shud. It's not Dari and it doesn't sound _exactly_ like Farsi, but if it's some form of Persian then it means 'it is finished' or 'the end' or something like that..."

Sherlock was looking at him with a sort of detached curiosity, as he always did on occasion when John unexpectedly stepped up. His hand was still resting over the letters he'd etched out in pen; finally he dropped it to his side. "Oh, yes," he said blandly. "Of course. Afghanistan."

"Oh, don't act so threatened. I used to be able to say about six things in Dari and now I think I've forgotten even that much."

John knew that it wasn't the fact that he had a smattering of a foreign language that had put Sherlock's back up. It was that they'd known each other for years and Sherlock had never thought to ask or find out about it. Sherlock knew almost nothing about John's army days, just as John knew almost nothing about Sherlock's university days. John had always assumed that this marked rock-bottom for both of them, in some ways.

"I'm not threatened." Sherlock prickled defensively. "Well. Lestrade says they're willing to leave the body there until we arrive, but since it's been about six hours already we can't -"

"Whoa, wait. _We?"_

Sherlock paused; the expression on his face told John that the idea that he mightn't want to drive halfway across the south of England that day had never crossed his mind. "Oh," he said briefly.

John, acutely aware that both Molly and Harry were behind him and in earshot, gestured Sherlock through to the kitchen and gently shut the connecting door behind them.

* * *

 

"And now it's on," Harry commented casually from her spot on the floor.

Molly didn't respond to this in words, but she got up and went through to the kitchen. As she got to the doorway she could hear John's voice. "Sherlock, come on, don't do this to me."

"Do _what_ to you?" was the snippish answer. There was a sudden clunk as the freezer door opened. "I don't think I can be faulted for assuming you'd come on a case with me, considering your reaction when I _don't_ ask you."

"And normally, I _would_ come with you. But you know I've got other priorities just at the moment -"

"Like what?"

"... You're joking. Please tell me you're joking."

"Oh, for God's sake, not _that_ again. You speak about the fourth of August as if it's some sort of apocalypse date. It's currently the seventh of July, John."

"Sherlock, no offence or anything, but you _really_ aren't the right person to be giving me this particular lecture, and that is _not an air conditioner_ so unless you feel like replacing everything that melts in there and paying our electricity bill, shut the freezer door."

Another clunk as the freezer door was shut with some force; Sherlock sighed and then, judging by the sound, reached for the door. Molly got out of the way just in time for Sherlock to open the door and brush past her into the corridor, evidently en route to the bathroom.

Timidly, Molly knocked on the open kitchen door and came in to find John still standing near the sink. On seeing her, he uncrossed his arms and smiled. "Everything okay?"

John didn't know it, but Molly was already getting a little tired of _everything okay?_ being his default standard greeting these days. "I'm fine," she told him. "You and Sherlock have a case?"

He shrugged. "Yes, well, Sherlock does. Murder."

"But it's far away."

"In Somerset. It's okay, I'm not going." He smiled and reached out beyond her for the door handle.

"But you _want_ to go..."

His hand rested on the door handle for a second; then he exhaled and withdrew it, turning to face her. "I..." he cleared his throat. "Yeah, well, we can't always do _everything_ we want."

"It's okay, John," she told him eagerly. "I know you don't want to leave me here, but it's really fine. I feel fine, and I'm not due for weeks, and Harry will be here-"

"You were doing well until the last part." He smiled wryly. "It's like I keep telling you with Harry. When she's bad, she's horrid."

"We'll invite Melissa around when she gets home from work- Hayley too, maybe. It'll be fun. Girl's night in. You don't want to be here for that, do you?"

"It sounds like even more fun than three hours in a car with Sherlock," John conceded, now racked with guilt from both sides. Molly had few female friends to do... whatever it was that women were supposed to do when they got together. To be fair, this had never seemed to bother her. But on the rare occasions that she requested girls-nights-in or girly-time or some other expression that excluded her husband, he nearly always felt it was his duty to give in.

"I was just thinking," she told him softly, "about how Debbie said we should have our own friends and hobbies and things, and try to... be understanding of that. So we don't feel like we're stopping the other one from having any fun."

Debbie Gilbert was the marriage counsellor John and Molly had been seeing for the past couple of months. John had to concede both that he liked her and that she was a much better therapist than Ella. It was true that she'd stressed the importance of having their own friends and hobbies and not becoming too co-dependant- something that was far more of a concern for John than for Molly, if past history had anything to do with it.

"That's true." He sighed. "You _do_ need some catch-up time with your friends."

"So do you. That was what I meant."

"We're going to investigate a _murder."_

She smiled. "That's what you _do_ with your friends."

* * *

"Looks like we'll only be gone overnight." Lestrade had dropped home for a shower and to pack a few overnight things. Melissa was at work; he'd had to trust things with her to a brief voicemail message and apologies for the short notice relayed through Hayley. She was watching him pack from the bedroom doorway.

"Is everyone on the squad going...?"

"Subtle," he shot back. "Don't worry, Jake's still in town."

Hayley sighed, dropped her arms and came into the room, sitting down on the bed. "Dad, stop being so hard on him. You _do_ know he's still really upset about that case with the kid?"

"Hmm?"

"The one that was found dead in landfill out at Edmonton."

"Oh, that."

'That' had only occurred a month before. But Lestrade had learned- and learned the hard way, when he'd been much younger - that there was only one way to manage when you were likely to deal with dozens of dead people a year. You dealt with the case at hand, and when it was over or out of your hands, you forgot about it- _really_ forgot about it. It wasn't easy. Some of the younger DCs hadn't learned these skills yet. They shut these things up in mental cupboards, believing out-of-sight-out-of-mind worked- and some took things hard. It sounded like Jake was one of them.

"Yeah, _that_." There was real ice in Hayley's tone. "You made him go and tell the kid's parents they'd found him... like _that_. Eight years old."

Lestrade sighed. "That is _not_ what happened," he corrected her firmly. "So I really hope that's your version of events, not his. I made him come with me while _I_ broke the news, yes."

She was silent for a few seconds. "Yeah, well, he's really _upset_ about it..."

"He seems okay to me. I'll have a word with him when we get back, see if he needs any extra support or help. But Hayley, that sort of thing is Jake's job. He's a DC on the homicide squad, he knows what that involves. It's not fun for anyone, but we don't do it for fun." He chucked her gently under the chin. "And just so you know, I'm not giving him a hard time of it just because of _you_ , either."

"'Just' because of me?"

"Well, I'm giving him a _bit_ of a hard time because of you," he admitted. "You'll thank me for it one day. Builds character."

"Mine or Jake's?"

"I was thinking mine, actually."

* * *

"You were right, John," Sherlock conceded with effort. They'd left Baker Street twenty minutes before and Sherlock, sitting in the front passenger seat, was researching as best he could on his phone. "Tamam Shud. The last line of the medieval Persian poem, the _Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam._ Translated several times by one Edward Fitzgerald in the mid nineteenth century- Lestrade, I can't think with that _racket_ going on."

"This 'racket' is the Clash," Lestrade commented in injured tones, obligingly turning it down. "Helps me drive. And just so you know, the alternative is Foreigner."

"I don't know who the Clash or Foreigner are, Lestrade," Sherlock reminded him. "You know I don't concern myself with trivia. I imagine from the context, though, that I'll like Foreigner even less than I like this."

"Pretty much."

"What do you think of the code, then?" John asked from the back seat, hoping to divert a squabble. It was the wrong way of going about it; he saw Sherlock stiffen slightly, then tilt his head down over the scrap of paper in his hand.

"I don't know," he finally muttered.

"Sorry, what was that? Couldn't hear you over the engine-"

"Oh shut _up,_ you heard me perfectly. This is sophisticated coding, John. None of the usual methods seem to apply at all... there doesn't seem to be any internal pattern or transference. But then," he pointed out stiffly, "I haven't had it in hand for long."

"Maybe military intelligence could...?"

Sherlock scoffed and kicked back in his seat. "You mean _Mycroft_."

"Well, he might be able to help, Sherlock." John pointed out.

"He doesn't need to," Sherlock retorted. "I'm quite capable of working it out on my own. I'll have an answer for you by the end of the day."

* * *

"I can't actually believe he _went_ , Molly. Nicely played there- I'm impressed. I honestly thought he was going to fetch-and-carry for you for the next six months."

Molly had got up and was examining the code on the wall, running her fingertips over it and puzzling out each letter. She wasn't keen on elaborating any of her "play" methods. John was highly embarrassed about being in marriage counselling, even if it was "maintenance" rather than "repair work", and had asked that it be kept a secret from his sister. "He means well," she said absently.

"Yeah, well, you know what the road to hell is paved with." Harry sat up and then got to her feet, a little unsteadily. "So there's a code or something, then?"

Molly nodded; Harry came over to have a look. "Does it mean anything to you?" she asked her.

Harry shook her head. "Nope. Nothing." She looked it over in silence for a few seconds, then grinned. "You know what," she said with glee, "let's ask Mycroft."

"Mycroft?"

"Yes, you know, the even more insufferable and even more genius brother of the insufferable genius we've thankfully seen out of London today. I don't exactly want you to invite Mycroft around for a cup of tea and a chat, but I doubt that's a habit of his anyway. I presume you have his number."

"Well, yes," Molly faltered. "But..."

"And you've got to admit, watching Sherlock throw a tantrum because his older brother figured this all out before he did would be pretty entertaining."

Molly sighed. Pretty entertaining for _Harry,_ perhaps, since she rarely saw Sherlock and didn't have to bear the brunt of said tantrum, which may well go on for weeks, depending on how much Mycroft rubbed it in when he solved the case.

That said, there was a dead man somewhere in Somerset, and he didn't even have a name, let alone a family who knew or cared he was dead. If solving the code would help...

* * *

Mycroft leaned back in his chair and sighed heavily, since there was nobody to see him do it. He'd had the fan on earlier, but it was too difficult to work while trying to anchor down every piece of stray paper in his office. So he'd turned it off and was now, he had to admit to himself, being broiled alive in his wool-weave suit. He was just preparing to get back to work when there was a brief knock at the closed office door.

"Come in."

A hesitant fumble at the handle, and then the door swung open. Stephen Hassell, apparently being broiled alive in _his_ impractical wool-weave suit, had opened the door with his elbow. He was carrying a tray with a carafe of water and a glass.

"Brought you some cold water, sir."

Hassell's strengths included fetching, carrying and stating the obvious.

"I don't remember asking for it," Mycroft commented distractedly, "but thank you, Hassell."

Mycroft hadn't needed to ask for anything at work in the past six months, particularly not since his trip to Ghana, when he'd returned much thinner and a little frail by way of contracting the sort of digestive complaint that polite people didn't mention. Stephen Hassell had been invaluable to him. He had, since the day he'd signed up as Mr. Holmes' personal secretary, demonstrated an almost superhuman ability to recognise- and sometimes predict- Mycroft's needs. Often, as now, he recognised them before Mycroft did.

"Perhaps I could get you something to eat, sir?" he suggested. "You've been hard at work since very early this morning."

Mycroft, unlike his brother, _did_ eat when he was working, though he was usually no better at remembering to and usually had to be reminded. He was still looking over the papers on his desk; looking up, he saw that Hassell was in earnest, waiting for a response.

"Yes," he said finally. "Yes, I think so."

"Anything you want in particular, sir?"

"I'll leave the choice entirely up to you, Stephen." Mycroft's face twitched into an unaccustomed smile, which Hassell returned.

"Certainly, Mycroft."

"Not when we're at work, thank you."

"Sorry, Mr. Holmes, sir."

Mycroft watched him leave, permitting himself another brief smile that he knew nobody else would see. He'd just lifted the glass of water in front of him to his lips when his phone rang. Hastily taking a sip, he fished his phone out of his jacket pocket, frowning for a second at the incoming number. "Mycroft Holmes."

"Mycroft?"

A cheerful, feminine voice. One he'd heard before, but could not place for a second. Someone who would call him by his first name...

"Hi, it's, uh, it's Harry Watson. I believe we've met."

Mycroft _had_ met Harry, but only in passing, and twice. He knew much more about her than she could ever expect, but at this moment, he wasn't thinking about Harry at all. He was wondering why it was she who was calling him, and not Sherlock, John or the woman Mycroft usually referred to as _Mrs Watson._

"How can I help, Miss Watson?" he asked tersely.

"Oh, no, everyone's fine, there's no emergency -"

Mycroft flinched. He hadn't meant to make that one pang of concern so _obvious_.

"Sherlock and John have been called to a case in Somerset," Harry went on. "A man's been found dead there this morning. Have you heard about it yet?"

"I haven't." A British diplomat had been kidnapped in Yemen just the night before, and Mycroft's whole energies- such as they were just then, under the heat- had been wholly taken up with the matter since just before dawn. Mysterious murders were Sherlock's mainstay, but they were a passing hobby for Mycroft whenever he had the chance for it.

"Long story, but they found some sort of code in his pocket- and it seems that even Sherlock has no idea what it means. I was wondering if you wanted to have a look at it? _Dying_ to find out, here."

Mycroft raised his eyebrows. Sherlock was by no means perfect, or some sort of thinking machine with no flaws or weak spots, but even Mycroft had to admit that his brother had the sort of mind that was ideal for creating order and pattern from chaos and randomness. If he really had 'no idea'...

"What sort of a code is it?" he found himself asking, reaching over the desk to pick up a pen and find a scrap of paper.

"Oh, I don't know what you call different types of codes. Looks like a jumble of random letters to Molly and me. I can read it out to you over the phone..."

"Yes, that would be the best thing." Mycroft wrote down the letters as Harry read them out, then glanced over the results, trying to make sense of it.

Nothing immediately sprang to mind.

"Thank you," he said stiffly, capping the pen. "I'll have an answer for you by the end of the day."


	3. Body

Mycroft was a busy man having a particularly busy morning; the code sat next to the landline on his desk for over an hour while he got back to more important business. In his down-moments, though, he found his fingers creeping back to turn the paper and look again.

He had no idea what it was.

Not Fractionated Morse. Not a Playfair code. Not Grandpre or Trifid or Vigenere...

Random. So far as Mycroft Holmes was concerned, the code was a collection of completely random letters, even allowing for the fact that it had been relayed to him through at least two fallible people by now. The fact that apparently Sherlock, too, could make nothing of it was only slightly comforting. When the clock struck eleven he rang the bell for Hassell again, who appeared within seconds.

"You wanted something, sir?"

"Yes." What Mycroft actually wanted was aspirin- his head was thumping in a way that was too obtrusive to ignore. But that could wait until Stephen returned. He sealed the code up in an envelope- probably wasn't a matter of high security, but one couldn't be too careful. A murder victim with a code may well be some kind of spy. "Take this to Division One. Tell them I want some kind of response by the end of the day."

"Yes, sir."

* * *

"I'm very glad you've arrived." DS Terence Cain, otherwise known as Terry, greeted the three newcomers to the crime scene just after the cloudless midday. Lestrade had parked the car near a culvert on the nearby road, and then it was a short walk downstream to where the body was still _in situ._ Initially the body itself was obscured by officers and tape and tarp; to John's relief, they couldn't smell anything. Still...

"We really can't leave the body here for much longer," was Cain's next offhand remark.

That was the natural law of death, and even worse in the heat. Early signs of decomposition weren't going to wait for a detective and his companions to show up. By this time it was thirty-four degrees, and the long grass they were wandering through was festooned with screaming crickets. The ground was bone dry- it hadn't rained in weeks- but even so Sherlock was wearing totally inappropriate Italian leather shoes for the occasion and was desperately trying to keep them clean.

"We've not moved him," Terry continued, barging through the grass determinedly like a cow going down to drink. He was totally unconcerned by hidden cow pats or rabbit holes or tussocks, and as sure-footed as if he'd been on an even pavement. "Taken photographs and a few samples- hair, fingernails. So once you're done, we really need to get him on ice. Got a post-mortem booked in for five, over in Street."

"I suppose there's no reason why my colleague couldn't be present for that," Sherlock remarked, quite forgetting, or not bothering, to enquire whether John would object to being present for it.

"I can't see a reason why not. Best come and have a look now, though, if you would."

* * *

 

He'd died with his eyes open.

John _hated_ it when they died with their eyes open. Certain uncharitable ex-classmates of his still told the story about how he'd once fled from the training post-mortem of a young woman- because he could have sworn that she'd blinked. That had been in third year. It was also the last that time Worldwide Watson had ever shown up for class hung over.

This guy wasn't particularly likely to blink, he reminded himself as he got down beside the body. Yep, definitely dead. Bronzy tones about the face, particularly his mouth. And... those open eyes. Blue eyes. Very blue.

"John," Sherlock prompted him.

John looked across at Cain instead. "I'm not a forensic pathologist," he warned him.

Cain shrugged. "Pathologist's had a look already," he commented. "Won't hurt for you to do the same, will it?"

"Well, true. I suppose I'm not bringing out the scalpel here and now." John, aware that he was being watched and judged by the Somerset officers and that Lestrade's reputation was on the line for it, leaned across to the dead man and began to have a proper look at what he was dealing with.

Whether it was the recently-deceased at the hospital or a murder victim found on a river bank, John had never felt comfortable rifling through a dead person's clothes. Especially not while he was _still wearing the bloody things._

"Caucasian. Early forties," was his first comment. "In very good physical condition- built like an athlete..." He had rolled the man's trouser leg up to his calf to have a look for varicose veins, and found impressive calf muscles there instead. "Rigor Mortis well underway. Early signs of decomposition, probably not helped by the weather, so dead maybe a little less than twelve hours. I'd say between three and five this morning, but that could be off by an hour or two." He gingerly pulled down the man's collar slightly. "Died elsewhere. See, this discolouration of his neck and the upper part of his shoulders..."

"Bruises?"

John shook his head. "Lividity- for the first couple of hours after he died, at least, he was lying in a position where his neck and shoulders were closest to the ground, and the blood settled accordingly. Rigor mortis generally sets in the limbs after ten or twelve hours, so I'd say he was moved here well before that happened- before dawn, probably- and he's been here since. I'm sure your pathologist and the Coroner will both agree, Inspector Cain."

"Cause of death?"

"It's going to have to wait for the autopsy, I'm afraid," John responded. "No obvious wounds or broken limbs that I can see... and none of the usual signs of internal injuries. Hard to tell with his clothes on. No visible blood, no vomit. He doesn't seem to have been recently washed, before or after death. Sherlock, I think it might be your turn."

Lestrade took a deep breath. Sherlock did too, for different reasons.

"Firstly," Sherlock said, "you all managed to miss this for several hours, which is alarming." He held up a small, discoloured scrap of paper.

"What is it?"

"I found it in the grass near the culvert as we got out of the car." Neither John nor Lestrade had even noticed him stoop to pick it up, though John suddenly remembered him fussing with his shoe. "There are two directions you absolutely _must_ look when examining a crime scene-"

"Up and down," John muttered.

"Is this a local telephone number, Inspector?" Sherlock held it out to Terry.

"Looks to be," was the response.

"Follow that up. This field is a mile from anywhere, even by Somerton standards. I refuse to believe that this happened to be here by coincidence, so either this fell out of the dead man's pocket as he was being moved from the road, or it fell out of the killer's pocket. My money is on the dead man."

"Why?"

Sherlock was no longer listening. He was poking around the body, in a much rougher and more disrespectful fashion than John had. Rifled his pockets, in case anything had been missed. Turned his lapels inside out. Sniffed him. Looked in his ears, his nose, his mouth. Took his hat off and tugged briefly at his wispy ginger hair. "Yes," he finally said. "In addition to what Dr Watson has already pointed out- early forties, in very good physical condition- our victim is, or rather was, a non-smoker and very poor. He's been recently ill, and is either lower working class or not British at all. Possibly, both."

Hearing these proclamations, several PCs had blatantly dropped what they were supposed to be doing and were milling around, listening in. Sherlock now had an audience, and he knew it. John sighed. It was too hot and horrible a scenario to deal with Sherlock's showing off as well.

"How could you know that?" Terry made the mistake of asking.

"Well it's really quite easy if you bother to _look,"_ Sherlock told him. Lestrade grit his teeth. "He was found with two cigarettes on him, I believe?"

"Bagged for DNA."

Sherlock sighed heavily. "I doubt you'd find any DNA on an _unsmoked_ cigarette. I believe one was behind his ear, and the other wedged in the crook of his shoulder. That's a rather odd place for a cigarette to be, isn't it? Plus, there are drag marks over near the culvert."

"Are there?"

"Your officers, Inspector, did their best to trample over them this morning, but I'm afraid they'd need a bulldozer to get that grass to a condition where _I_ couldn't see the signs. At least one person brought him here by car, which was probably parked over where we parked just now. He was an awkward- excuse the expression- dead weight by then. As Dr Watson said, he was probably already dead but not in rigor mortis. There are marks where he was dragged for a few paces, before probably being bundled up into a more manageable parcel and carried the rest of the way. Neither of those cigarettes would have lasted that journey, so they were planted on him afterward by whoever killed him- or at least, by whoever left him here."

"But even so, how do you know he doesn't smoke?"

"Because I _do_ smoke, Inspector." Sherlock held out his own right hand and displayed the yellowish stains between his index and middle fingers. "Very hard to avoid those nicotine stains. They don't wash off. No signs of nicotine staining on either of his hands, though there's callusing on his right that indicates he was right-handed. His clothes don't smell like smoke, either. I think when his lungs are examined you'll find them crystal clear and devoid of any significant amounts of tar. Built like an athlete, Dr Watson said. And a man built like this would be in very good shape. Not a smoker."

"Then why the cigarettes?"

"Possibly a smoke-screen, if you'll excuse the expression. You need to check for signs of nicotine poisoning at the autopsy. John, make sure they don't forget. Now. One of the things I noted- and which you didn't, John, or you didn't say- there are no tags on any of this man's clothing. They've been cut off. Traces of fraying indicate this was done with sharp scissors, rather than a knife or another kind of blade."

"An attempt at hiding his identity?" John ventured.

"Maybe, but I think it's far more likely that there's a more dull explanation for it. Charity shops cut the tags off clothing. This man's entire wardrobe is second-hand. These clothes _were_ good quality, but that was years ago, and now they're nearly threadbare. So- he was poor. His trousers don't fit properly, and his shirt isn't overly well fitted either. Even a charity shop would be able to provide clothing that fits, even if he was an odd size- and he isn't. So that tells me he's recently lost a significant amount of weight, and lost it rapidly. Given his age, gender and fitness level, I very much doubt he was on a crash diet, which leaves only one realistic alternative- he's been ill. John, keep that in mind at the post-mortem. As to his being working class or not British, it's perfectly obvious from his teeth."

"His teeth?"

"They're in shocking condition. In fact, I think you might do well to look for signs of septic poisoning. Either this man is poor enough that he's been unable and unwilling to see a dentist for years- at least ten years, I should say- or he's foreign, and hails from somewhere with even worse dental care. If we assume that this phone number was written by him- you need to check the handwriting against the original of the code that was found- then he's most certainly not English, or at least, not English-born."

Terry, who had been watching Sherlock open-mouthed, turned a little hesitantly to Lestrade. "Lestrade, I know Mr. Holmes has a reputation for being brilliant, but this-"

"I've got nearly ten years of experience with this man," Lestrade responded in low tones. "I trust him. If you want your crime solved, I suggest you trust him, too."

"These numbers were written by someone who is not used to writing in a Latin script." Sherlock apparently hadn't heard or registered Lestrade's compliment. "It's hesitant, and the numbers have been formed backwards- the five was formed from the bottom up, for example, and so was this three. However, the level of pen control tells me we're not looking for a penman who is semi-literate, nor are we looking for a child. The writer is, or was, used to writing, just not in English. What do you notice about this six, for example?" He showed it to John, who peered at it for a couple of seconds.

"It's been changed."

"Yes. From what?"

"An S? Then they've bridged the lower gap to make it an awkward six."

"Since S is a letter and unlikely to be part of a local phone number, I'll stop you there, John. It wasn't changed from an S. It was changed from the Cyrillic numeral for six."

"Cyrillic?" Terry repeated.

"Yes, the script used in quite a few Eastern European countries including Russia, parts of the former Soviet Union, and Macedonia. This man was used to writing in his native language which, if you're keeping up, isn't English. He absent-mindedly wrote "six" the way he would in his own language, and then changed it. Both the mistake and the change were done out of habit, suggesting this happens often, and that his English was fairly shaky."

"Wait," Terry finally broke in. "DI Lestrade says you're brilliant, Mr Holmes…" Lestrade looked momentarily embarrassed by this… "and I believe him. But this is a small village, Mr Holmes. Any strangers stick out like a sore thumb, even if they're only from one of the neighbouring villages. People talk. They have little else to do. If this man had an accent - if he was foreign - the whole place would be in an uproar about it in five minutes."

"That's if he was here _openly_ ," Sherlock told him. "Find who this phone number belongs to."


	4. The Jestyn Lead

It was nearly two o'clock that afternoon, and they'd checked into the hotel and were sheltering from the heat, when Lestrade got a call. The Yeovil officers had discovered the owners of the mysterious unlisted phone number.

"A Daniel and Renae Jestyn," he relayed to Sherlock and John once he'd got off the phone. "They live on a hobby farm of some kind just out of town. He works shift for a packaging company in town; she's a nurse over in Street. Got a kid, Nicholas. He's eleven years old-"

"Yes, all this I could find out from a census," Sherlock commented crossly. "But what does this have to do with the _case_?"

"Dunno, yet. Do you want to go over and find out?"

* * *

 

The Jestyn house was a low-eaved, sprawling property, in desperate need of a good coat of paint but otherwise neat and inviting-looking. Lestrade parked the car in the yard; they'd already got out before they heard the barking. Several large dogs raced around from the side of the house, anxious to find out who the newcomers were.

A sudden shout from the porch. The front door had opened, and Daniel Jestyn had come out to see what the commotion was about. Since the largest of his dogs still had Sherlock up against the car, sniffing him suspiciously, he called them off- sounding, Sherlock thought, almost as snarly and growly as if he were one of them. Not a man to cross, apparently. He was wearing a grubby singlet and a pair of shorts. Forearms like two great legs of Christmas ham. The dogs scattered at his voice- one down the slope toward a little duck pond, and the other two around the side of the house.

 _The dogs didn't heel,_ Sherlock thought to himself. _They ran off. Interesting._

"Who are you lot, then?" was the ungracious question.

_Just woken up. Shift worker, of course._

"I'm Detective Inspector Lestrade." Lestrade flashed his warrant card. Sherlock's mouth twitched slightly. Lestrade didn't like Daniel Jestyn. If he did, he would have tacked the name "Greg" in there somewhere.

"Police've already been here this afternoon."

"Yes, I know. I've just come to make some more enquiries, if I may. I'm from Scotland Yard…"

Another twitch. Lestrade rarely used the words "Scotland Yard" either, unless he had to.

"Is your wife at home, Mr. Jestyn?"

"Yes, she's just come back from bringing the boy home." Daniel reluctantly let them inside.

Renae Jestyn was in the kitchen. She seemed about the same age as her husband, late thirties. A tall, angular woman. Sherlock immediately thought of a bitchy remark Melissa had once made about a work colleague: "she had all the contours of an ironing board." Wore glasses, had good taste in clothes, and seemed pleasant enough as they came in.

In other words, she was a world apart from her loutish husband.

 _Also_ interesting.

"Nicholas and I just got in now," she explained. Nicholas, a scowling pre-teen with dark hair falling into his eyes and, evidently, all of his father's social skills, was in the living room and clearly keeping an ear out. He too had heard the magic words: 'Scotland Yard.' "I'll put the kettle on."

"Thank you." Lestrade introduced everybody again. "We don't mean to be an imposition, Mrs Jestyn, we just have a couple of follow-up enquiries to make, and then we'll be out of your hair."

"Are you a real detective?" Nicholas had come to the doorway and was addressing Lestrade.

"Yes, mate."

"Where's your badge? Can I see it?"

Lestrade fished the card back out of his pocket and handed it over. "Knock yourself out." He wasn't _supposed_ to hand over his warrant card to civilians, but he'd always done so for children who wanted to see it.

"Do you have a gun?" Nicholas was looking admiringly at it.

"Not on me," Lestrade responded.

"Have you ever shot anyone?"

"Nicholas!" Renae scolded. "Give DI Lestrade his badge back and behave yourself, please."

"No, I haven't," Lestrade smiled as he took it back and tucked it back into his pocket. "The police don't shoot people for kicks. Most officers don't carry. Not like telly."

Nicholas looked disappointed. Lestrade had ruined many a tweenaged boy's dreams of becoming the baddest gun-wielding officer on the force by informing them that it didn't really work that way and it was more paperwork than shooting people, even if you _were_ a friend of Sherlock Holmes.

Throughout this conversation John had been politely at ease, face and body language neutral; Sherlock had been looking around, evaluating Daniel, Renae, Nicholas, and the family home.

"Sherlock," John finally muttered to him. "Stop it. You look like you're casing the place."

"My apologies," Sherlock said immediately. "I'm an avid reader, Mrs Jestyn, and I was just admiring your collection of books." He pointed to the towering bookshelves in the adjoining living room. "May I have a look, please?"

"Go for it," Renae was clearly pleased to find another kindred spirit bibliophile (and, Sherlock reflected, of _course_ she would be. Her husband was a knuckle-dragger and her son thought the exciting part of crime solving was the violent part.) "We'll have tea in there, I think."

 _Excellent_ , Sherlock thought to himself as he wandered over to the bookcase. That gave him even more opportunity to have a look at the sort of books Renae Jestyn owned. Not just rubbish paperbacks, even at a glance. She had an 1894 hardback edition of Sir Walter Scott's poetry, for heaven's sake.

"So you've come across from London, then?" Renae said pleasantly as she fussed around with the kettle and cups.

"Yeah, this morning," Lestrade responded.

"Is it hot over there as well?"

"Just a bit. Hit thirty-two before we left."

"Ouch. I can't remember such a brutal summer."

"Me neither. I remember there was a particularly hot summer when I was a kid, but it was nothing like this."

Sherlock, still looking over Renae's books and evaluating whether she would be interested in Persian poetry, was only keeping vague tabs on what Lestrade was saying. So far, aside from his one muttered comment to Sherlock, John had not yet said a single word. He rarely did when Lestrade the Real Detective accompanied them on investigation.

"Do they usually send Scotland Yard to investigate in these parts?" Renae was searching around in the fridge after milk.

"Not always."

"But you're a local boy, Inspector Lestrade. The accent gives you away."

Lestrade, who had instinctively fallen into a broader accent than the one he used in London, smiled foolishly.

"Not quite local," he explained. "But nearabouts…"

Sherlock stopped himself before he could roll his eyes. Why did ordinary people have to be so _boring?_ He turned back to the bookshelf.

* * *

 

By the time Renae brought tea into the living room Sherlock, who had trusted John to keep track of anything interesting that transpired during the conversation in the kitchen and had completely zoned them out, had taken stock of just about every single book in the room. First and second editions. Signed copies, some of them. Dust jackets intact. You couldn't buy books like these in Yeovil or Street. In fact you probably couldn't even buy them in Glastonbury. This woman loved books and went to a considerable effort to collect them and to set them all out systematically.

Books like _the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam?_

Did she buy them over the internet? He'd find out.

His phone bleeped from the direction of his jacket pocket; he fished it out and read the incoming message:

* * *

_I've sent the Somerton code to MI1. I'll call when I can._

_-MH._

* * *

Sherlock groaned. _Harry._ Only Harry Watson would have given Mycroft the details of the Somerton Code. There was an uneasy peace between John and Mycroft these days, but John would never have texted him behind Sherlock's back; Molly wouldn't have done so either.

He'd send the book information to _Mycroft,_ then. Because if Mycroft was going to get involved in this, then the least he could do is make some useful enquiries into that area. He started to text him back with the details.

"Sorry," he said politely to Renae. "Just jotting down some titles I'd quite like for myself. Where do you buy these from, if it's not a rude question?"

She smiled. "EBay, most of them."

Excellent. Mycroft practically _owned_ EBay.

"Are you interested in anything in particular, Mr Holmes?"

"Well… yes, to be honest. Do you own a copy of _the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam?"_

She barely blinked. "No," she said. "I did, many years ago, when I was a university student. Why?"

"What happened to it?"

"I gave it to the man I was dating at the time. Adam Boxall."

Daniel was still on the porch; evidently he wasn't of a social streak and wasn't joining them for tea. They all noted how she glanced in his direction as she spoke.

"Where is Adam Boxall now?"

"God knows," was the casual answer. "Why?"

Before Lestrade could stop him, Sherlock said, "because the last page of a 1962 edition of the Rubaiyat was found in the dead man's pocket, Mrs Jestyn."

Pause.

"Mr Holmes, I've never met the- the man who died- in my life," she told him. "I'll admit it's an amazing coincidence, but it's nothing more than that."

"You've seen the dead man, then?"

"I've seen a photograph of him, yes. The officers brought it 'round this afternoon."

"And the man isn't Adam Boxall."

"Absolutely not."

"Look again. Lestrade, where's the photograph?"

Lestrade had been given a couple of digital prints of the corpse before they had left the initial crime scene; he handed over the shot of the dead man's face. Sherlock held it just inches from Renae's own face. "This isn't Adam Boxall?"

She looked at it without wavering. "No," she said flatly.

John reached over and touched Sherlock's elbow for a second; a hint for him to watch how aggressive his body language was becoming. Sherlock ignored it.

"And you've never seen him before in your life."

"I've never seen him before in my life."

"Thank you for the tea, but we really must be going." Sherlock hadn't touched _any_ of his tea, and both John and Lestrade nearly had a full cup left. "Places to see, things to investigate. We'll be back in London tomorrow, but we'll keep in touch with you and with the local force. Thank you for your time."

* * *

 

"She's lying," Sherlock said, the second Lestrade started the engine.

"What, you think the dead man is Adam Boxall?"

"No, John. Do you ever listen to _anything_ properly?"

John rolled his eyes. "No, because I'm an idiot. Now what's going on?"

"When I asked her if the man in the photograph was Adam Boxall, she said it wasn't. And there's no real reason not to believe her. But then, when I asked if she'd ever seen him before in her life? She repeated my phrasing. _No, I have never seen him before in my life._ People who deny something- or confirm it- by repeating the sentence are almost always lying."

"Are they?"

"Yes. A person who does that isn't sure of what they're saying. They're repeating phrases to buy time and to ensure they don't slip up and say the wrong thing. So she's lying."

"Why?"

"I haven't a clue."

"Do you think she killed him?"

"Well, that seems rather a stretch when we don't even know who he is, don't you think? Don't talk to me for a bit, I need to think about this."

* * *

At five that evening, at about the same time that John was in attendance at the dead man's post-mortem, Harry got a return phone call from Mycroft Holmes.

MI1 had absolutely no idea what the code was.

Their computer programs couldn't decipher it. Their best men and women had no idea. It was, so far as they were concerned, either nonsense or the most sophisticated code they'd ever seen in their lives. They'd sent it back to Mycroft for his opinion.

Mycroft, hating himself the whole time, had agreed. He didn't know what it was either.

"This is amazing," Harry told Molly. "Something that neither Genius nor Genius v. 2 can solve. I love it."

"I hope they can at least get some closure for the dead man's family," Molly murmured. "If he has any. John says they don't even know who he is yet. I just think that's sad, for someone to die and for people to not even know who they are."

Harry stopped, the wind fairly taken out of her sails.

"Yes," she said. "Yes, I suppose that is quite sad, really, when you think about it."

There was an uncomfortable pause while she pondered this over. "Molly," she suddenly said, "while we're on the topic, did you want me to take you out to see your Dad this evening? It's cooled down quite a lot now."

Molly's father had been dead for eleven years, but it rarely felt like that long to her. Just now, it sometimes felt worse- Malcolm Hooper, who had only ever wanted his daughter to be happy, had never met his son-in-law and was never going to meet his grandchild. Most recently, the previous Saturday, she'd asked to go out to the cemetery at half past ten at night and John had yielded and taken her, because what else could he do? After all, the only reason he'd not spent some nights by Sherlock's grave was because that cemetery had high gates that locked at sunset.

Molly nodded. "If it's okay."

"It's definitely okay. We'll go whenever you're ready."

"Can we buy some flowers on the way?"

"Yes, of course we can. But wouldn't it be more fun to pinch them from someone's garden instead?"

"Harry!"

"Oh, fine, I suppose we could _buy_ them. We're definitely getting ice cream on the way home, though."

"Yes." Molly smiled wanly. "Yes, I'll agree to that."

* * *

Sherlock, John and Lestrade were being put up for the night at the Lynch, courtesy of the Met. Lestrade, partly in childish glee at spending money that wasn't his and partly because he knew what people were going to say, had booked three rooms, even though he could have booked a twin. Much to John's continued irritation, not even the fact that he wore a thick gold wedding band- and Sherlock did not- was going to stop some people from assuming he and Sherlock were lovers. No shock- the usual, really. But it was the assumption that he was having an _affair_ with Sherlock that annoyed John the most.

It was nearly half past nine when he finally arrived back from the post-mortem and went up to Lestrade's room, where they were waiting for him.

"Well?" Sherlock pounced the second he got in.

"Well, we've established that he's certainly dead."

"John, I'm serious."

"Yeah, and I'm tired. Give me a minute." John went into the ensuite, splashed his face with cold water, and came back out to the room, where Lestrade handed him a pre-packaged sandwich and a bottle of lemonade.

"Sorry," he said. "Best I could do at this hour."

"I've just been playing with a corpse, or at least watching other people do it," John said. "The last thing I'm interested in right now is dinner. But thanks."

Sherlock was still watching him.

"We don't know, Sherlock." John sat down. "He still hasn't been identified. No tattoos, no distinguishing scars. DNA, fingerprints and dental records have been sent off, but that will take a while. The jury's still out on the nicotine poisoning, but there were no visible hypodermic marks we could find."

"So no cause of death yet?"

"Poisoning- substance unknown, as yet, but probably administered orally. There was a lot of blood in his stomach, and he'd eaten a pastie or something like it an hour or so before he died. And before you ask, there was little to no tar in his lungs."

Sherlock preened.

"Otherwise his insides seemed perfectly normal, except that he had an enlarged spleen."

"And what does that mean?" The fact that Sherlock was admitting that he didn't know- and was asking John instead of secretly searching on his phone and pretending he knew all along- was testament to how anxious he was to find out.

"Could be any number of things- we'll know in a few days. Realistically, it was probably viral mono," John said. "That'd account for the weight loss, too. Quite recently, like you said."

"Would he have been hospitalised for that?"

"He probably should have been, since it seems like it was pretty bad- but that doesn't mean that he was. We're checking that out with all the hospitals in Somerset. That'll take a few days, too. Any more on the code?"

"Mycroft doesn't know what it is."

John blinked in confusion. "What's Mycroft got to do with it?"

"Nothing, until your bloody sister sent the code to him."

"Did she? That was nice of her." John was already planning on texting his gratitude to Harry. He took a swig out of the lemonade bottle. "And even he's got no idea what it is?"

"None." Sherlock had taken on tones of vindicated superiority over his brother. "But thanks to Harry, we'll probably have military intelligence here tomorrow."


	5. Intelligence

Despite Sherlock's concerns in that department Mycroft, who had always been an obnoxiously early riser, called with the news at seven the following morning: military intelligence weren't interested.

"They're confident that this is not a matter of national security," he told Sherlock down the line. "The case is all yours, little brother."

Sherlock, who was never pleasant when he'd been woken up, was not particularly grateful just then. "Did you look into Renae Jestyn's Ebay purchases?" he demanded, rubbing his eyes and trying to focus on the case at hand.

"Yes."

"And you found no evidence she bought a copy of the Rubaiyat that way?" Sherlock got up and staggered over to the kitchenette to make coffee.

"None. But I'm told there are people who still buy books from actual bookstores, Sherlock."

Sherlock scowled, filling the kettle with one hand. "That's going to take me _ages_ to investigate _,"_ he complained.

"Yes, probably. And speaking of ages, we're running checks for the identity of the dead man."

"Scotland Yard are doing that, Mycroft. They do have databases for that kind of thing."

"Either way, you'll have to wait. Still, have you got anything else to occupy yourself with just now? I would have thought you'd regard a case like this as a godsend."

* * *

Ordinarily, Sherlock might have. But the circumstances of the investigation were not moving in his favour. Lestrade seemed a little more preoccupied with other things than he usually did; John was a lot more so. He was becoming - Sherlock reflected on the word in complete disgust - _domesticated._ It was well after midday when they arrived back in London and John invited Sherlock back into the house, where they found Molly standing at the kitchen table. The fan was on again, playing with the damp tendrils of her loose hair. She was looking over some papers on the table in front of her.

"Hey." John put his arm around her and gave her a brief kiss. It was not demonstrative by any stretch of the imagination, but Sherlock glanced away for a second. "You've been busy."

"Yeah," she agreed tiredly. "I don't think I'm getting anywhere with it, though."

"You're not alone - Toby, get _off that."_ Toby had just jumped up onto the table, sending some of Molly's papers fluttering onto the floor; John picked them up and then picked Toby up. "Where's Harry?"

"She went home a few hours ago. I couldn't stop her," Molly explained. "I think she just wanted a night in her own bed. I hope."

John had long ago squared with the fact that it was impractical - well, impossible - for him to check Harry's house every single day for alcohol. "I'll call her tonight. Light reading?"

He pointed to a copy of _the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam_ on the table. Not the fabled limited edition; a modern one, and clearly brand new. Sherlock had also turned his attention to the book, partly because it solved the urge to stare at Molly's mid-section instead.

"Yes." She smiled. "I thought it might help me try to work this code out if I actually read it."

"And did it?" Sherlock wanted to know.

"It certainly helped my boredom levels," she said. "I like it. It's pretty."

Sherlock rolled his eyes, and John shot him a warning glance. "What's it about?" John asked her.

"I'm a bit embarrassed to say it, but I'm not sure." Molly blushed. "It's... well, I suppose it's like a sort of love poem, but not like a normal love poem. I mean, I think it's about loving life, and wine, and things, too."

"Kind of appropriate to find on a dead guy, then," John remarked.

"Yeah- I don't think there's much to go on there. There was something else I did notice, though..." Molly had picked up one of the pieces of paper on the table. "About the code. You said that 'tamam shud' is Persian?"

"Yes."

"And Persian's read from right to left, like Arabic?"

"Yes."

"Well, I was wondering, you know... if that might be something we've overlooked about the code," she put forth timidly - a timidness that John knew she wouldn't use if Sherlock Holmes hadn't been standing next to him. He was inexplicably annoyed at her. She was an intelligent woman, for God's sake...

"Overlooked what?" he urged her.

"Well, maybe we're all reading it the wrong way around." Molly tucked a lock of hair behind one ear. "I had a look and see here: WRGOABABD. If you read it backwards, it's D-B-A-B-A-O-G-R-W. And if you use a simple letter substitution..."

"Of course," Sherlock muttered, sounding enlightened and humiliated at the same time. "Of _course_. T-A-M-A-M-S-H-U-D."

"But then," Molly continued, "that makes a bit of nonsense of the next line. If we use the same substitute letters... well, it's a bit like hangman. I can't think of any letter substitutions that would make PTENAPMIBTW into a word..."

Sherlock frowned, looking it over for a few seconds. His silence was the answer. He couldn't think of any acceptable substitutions either.

"Do you think it's a coincidence about the first line?" John asked him.

"Might be," he muttered. "I'd say more than likely, if Mycroft's people didn't think that the code was decipherable. Still, it's something worth keeping in mind, I suppose. Anything else, Molly?"

"Only a little thing," she said. "See where the second line's been crossed out? It's almost the same line as down here."

"Okay, so?" John was looking over her shoulder at the piece of code she'd indicated, while Toby, against his shoulder, decided to lean over and nuzzle Molly's ear.

"So the writer made a mistake, which means that it's not gibberish. It must have meant something very specific to him. Specific enough that he had to correct a mistake that he'd made."

"Clearly."

John shot Sherlock a look. Or, perhaps more correctly, A Look.

"But it wasn't just any mistake, because the next line is totally different," she explained, unperturbed by the bite in Sherlock's words, or perhaps not noticing it. "It wasn't like they were a letter or two off. The line _after_ that is similar, but with a couple of extra letters added."

"What's that mean?" John asked her.

"I don't know. But I think it means that if this man was writing it down, he was still deciding what to write-"

"Not transcribing," Sherlock finished for her. "Making it up out of his own head. That would also explain why he corrected the number six from Cyrillic- he wouldn't have bothered if the note was for himself, since he wouldn't have had any difficulty understanding his own language. Which means he wasn't writing down a code _from_ someone. It was _for_ someone."

"And the question is: who?"

"Yes, thank you for summing that up so eloquently, John."

John knew better than to bite the bait; there was silence for a few seconds as Molly shuffled around the papers on the table, piling them up. "No dinner yet, sorry," was what she said next. "I was concentrating on this and I forgot all about it."

"Never mind," John said casually. "A sandwich will do me just fine. You'll stay for a bit, Sherlock? A sandwich has to be a better dinner than nothing."

Sherlock looked confused, as if John's suggestion had been somehow outrageous. "You know I don't eat when I'm working."

"You know it's going to be at least a week before we get any further info on the case," John pointed out. He put Toby on the floor and wandered out to the kitchen. "Consider it on hiatus. We've been through this a million times, Sherlock, you need to eat to live."

"Eating's boring."

John sighed as he opened the fridge door. Sherlock was still, well and truly, about three years old at heart, no matter how clever he was.

* * *

The following week passed uneventfully; even Sherlock had to admit that there was not a lot he could do while he had to wait on lab tests and identity checks. Five days after the discovery of the body, Mycroft made a rare visit to 221B, armed with some important-looking files. He found Sherlock, as he'd expected, at the kitchen table in the middle of an experiment involving some thick purple liquid and iron filings.

"I hope I'm not distracting you?" was Mycroft's opening gambit.

Sherlock waved his brother vaguely into a chair, deep in observation of a slide for a few seconds more. Finally he rose. "Not anymore," he said, giving Mycroft as much of his attention as he was ever willing to give him. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

Mycroft crossed his legs comfortably, in no hurry to begin and gratify Sherlock's curiosity. "I've called in to let you know that we've identified the dead man."

Sherlock raised an eyebrow. 'We'?"

"I told you I had people out looking." Mycroft licked one finger and opened the file in his hands in a business-like way. "Military intelligence may have been thoroughly bored by your little case, but that doesn't mean they weren't interested in identifying the body, especially when initial dental records pulled up nothing. Yakiv Kazan. Aged forty. Ukrainian by birth. Attended the University of Bristol as an international exchange student seventeen years ago, and vanished shortly thereafter."

"So he was an illegal."

"Not until he disappeared. And even then he was presumed to be dead after all this time."

"Well, he's definitely dead now. Is he a person of interest to the government?"

"Only in the sense of his overstaying his visa," Mycroft said carefully, still looking over the papers in his hand. "We don't think he's a spy, if that's what you mean, so if you want my advice-"

"I don't," Sherlock muttered.

"- Then you won't waste time looking for signs of espionage."

Sherlock was silent for a few seconds. He was looking Mycroft over carefully, trying to work out if this was his honest advice or whether he was trying to steer his brother clear of anything approaching the actual truth of the matter. He'd been known to do that before.

So far as he could tell, Mycroft was being genuine. _Not_ espionage.

"So what's your theory, then?" he asked snakily. "Why would he have been hiding for seventeen years - oh, of course." The penny dropped. "He's wanted in the Ukraine, isn't he."

"Political crimes... nothing we'd call major, not over here. But the Ukrainian government isn't as lax about criticism as we are. And they certainly weren't eighteen years ago."

"Why didn't he claim political asylum, then?"

"You tell me. It's _your_ case."

After Mycroft had left, Sherlock went to his wallet and pulled out the photograph of the dead man that he kept while the case was ongoing. Glassy blue eyes stared back at him.

_Your name was Yakiv Kazan. But who were you...?_

* * *

"Dyer- my office, please."

It was six days of chaotic work before Lestrade, glancing over at where Jake Dyer was diligently at his desk, working with witness reports, remembered what Hayley had said about the kid who'd been murdered. Time for a talk, then. Dyer, cringing slightly, rose from his desk and followed Lestrade into his office, shutting the door behind them when gestured to do so.

Lestrade had a sort of open-book policy with his team; "my office" generally meant that he meant serious, confidential business for some reason. Lestrade had noticed the cringe. As he sat down and gestured for the young DC to do the same, he could see the kid racking his brains guiltily for anything he might be about to be reamed for.

"How've you been recently, Dyer?" he asked pleasantly.

Dyer frowned in confusion. Apparently, a polite enquiry into his state of wellbeing was not what he expected. "Good, sir," he responded.

"Good?"

He nodded, still looking confused. Lestrade sighed and leaned back in his chair. "All right, I'll cut the crap," he said. "Hayley says you're not coping very well about the landfill case. And before you go getting all offended, I'm bringing it up because I'm your senior officer, and I'm responsible for overseeing your wellbeing. And that means that if I get even a _hint_ that things might not be okay with you, I have to say something."

"What did Hayley say?" Dyer sounded defensive.

"Not much, so you can calm down about her violating your trust or whatever you're planning to have a row with her about later. She just said you were upset about it. She seemed to think I'd sent you along to tell the family on your own. I hope that's not what you told her."

"No, sir."

Lestrade paused. "Okay. I've known Hayley since she was born, and she can exaggerate, so I'll believe you on that one. Still, if you feel like you're not coping with the sort of emotions that dredged up, there's no shame in saying so. We've all been there."

"I'm really fine, sir. I know Hayley was worried... I was... not as fine when I first told her about it. But I'm fine now. Moving on."

"All the same, I'm going to give you the direct number for the in-house counsellor..." Lestrade pulled the card out of his wallet and passed it across the desk. "Just in case you want it. Confidential. I can't even ask if you've seen her, let alone what anyone said. And I can tell you that she's a much better counsellor than Hayley. A lot less dramatic."

Jake smiled wryly.

"Think on it, Dyer. It can't hurt. And let me know if you're about do something extreme, like puke at a crime scene or lock yourself in a squad car."

"Lock myself in a squad car...?"

"You wouldn't be the first DC to do it." Lestrade paused. "Actually, you wouldn't even be the _third_ DC to do it. Remarkably popular, the old lock-self-in-squad-car-to-avoid-dealing-with-crime -scene technique. Counselling's a lot more effective. Trust me."

* * *

"Come to bed, Lolly, you're exhausted."

It was half-past eleven in the evening on the seventh day. John had been yawning for half an hour and impatiently waiting for Molly to agree that it was high time to collect the cats and turn in. The kitchen table being otherwise occupied, she had brought a corkboard into the living room and had spent the greater part of the week collaborating information on the Somerton Man. On top of a copy of the portrait of the dead man that Mycroft had given Sherlock, she also had, among other things, a photograph of the corpse _in situ_ from somewhere and had pinned that up next to it.

John was not a visual thinker, and considered thought-maps, whether they were mental or physical, to be all a bit silly. Still, it had been keeping Molly occupied. A bit too occupied.

"I, um, yes..." she glanced at the clock. The sudden dazed look on her face betrayed that she had no idea how it had got so late while she'd been wrapped up thinking about codes and poetry. "Yes. Sorry."

"You're not a kid," he reminded her. "It was a request, not an order. Is everything okay? You look kind of hazed-out."

"I'm bored, John," she confessed in a little voice. "I hate to sound ungrateful, I really do. But I'm so _bored_. That's why I'm doing this. It's so much better than ironing the sheets for the crib- again- or trying to decide if I like the name Thomas or Oliver better!"

"Yes," he said, resisting the urge to go to her and put an arm around her shoulders. "Fair cop. You know that if there's anyone who hates sitting around at home it's me. But you can't work right now, Molly. I mean, not like usual, not when you're about to have a baby."

"I feel fine," she protested.

"And Barts doesn't want a lawsuit if you happen to have our baby in the lab," he continued before she could launch into her pregnancy-is-not-an-illness spiel. "That's all it is. Plus, you know, they probably assume you're tired and _want_ some time off, anyway."

Molly sighed. She wasn't in the right headspace to try to protest, again, that she wasn't tired and didn't need a rest. She needed something _clever_ to bite into. There was only so much she was going to be able to do from home - or close to home - but it was better than nothing. And much better than browsing parenting forums online, which she was beginning to feel were worse than nothing.

* * *

On the eighth day after the discovery of the body, Lestrade visited Baker Street. As usual, he let himself into the flat on Mrs Hudson's say-so; Sherlock hardly, if ever, answered the doorbell when it rang.

Although it was four in the afternoon, Sherlock was still in his dressing gown. The Stradivarius on the sofa gave away the fact that he'd been thinking hard all afternoon. The remote control for the television, resting on the arm of his chair, gave away the fact that he'd given up at some point and decided to watch telly instead. Lestrade found him doing neither; he was reading a science periodical, which he promptly tossed over the side of the chair as he came in.

"Lestrade," he said. "I don't recall hearing the doorbell."

"You know I've given up on the doorbell, Sherlock. You never answer it, and it drives Mrs. H up the wall with it ringing off the wall day and night. Just dropped round to tell you that the lab results are in."

Sherlock looked up in sudden interest. "And...? Did you get a cause of death?"

"Officially? He died of a lethal dose of buggered-if-we-know." Lestrade sighed, handed the appropriate files over, and flopped down on the sofa. "Before you ask, yes."

"Yes, what?"

"Yes, I've been wrangling all bloody afternoon with my superiors to get samples sent to Barts so you can have a look at them instead. They'll be there by tomorrow afternoon; the morning after at the latest. Until then, we can only go by the toxicology report from the Street pathologist."

Ordinarily, this would have pleased Sherlock greatly, but this time he only frowned. Lestrade, seeing it, knew the reason why. Molly was on maternity leave, and her replacement was less-than-tolerant of Sherlock Holmes.

"Did the best I could," Lestrade commented. "Don't blame _me_ for Molly being on leave."

"No, I think we can all agree that that's John's fault."

The second this had left his mouth, Sherlock visibly flinched. Evidently, he wasn't keen on discussing John's procreative role - or Molly's, for that matter. It had been a topic he'd rarely broached in the past six months; and when others did, it generally made him squirm in a way that Lestrade had noticed and didn't quite understand.

"Yeah, well, I'm sure he won't mind the accusation." He shrugged. "You can't blame John for the timing, anyway, considering we still thought you were dead when that happened."

"When 'that happened'?"

"Life goes on, Sherlock. It's not always about the newest case, you know."

Sherlock made another vague, non-commital noise that sounded, Lestrade thought, very much like a disagreement.


	6. Down the Line

On the morning of the ninth day after the discovery of the body in Somerton, Sherlock was back at the Watson place with more news than ever. After several days of moderately warm temperatures, it had started to heat up again. He found both John and Molly were at home and at ease, with John trying to read a paper without Casper sitting on it and Molly at the laptop, doing something that looked suspiciously like work.

"You've got news on the Somerton case," John remarked calmly, barely looking up from his paper.

Sherlock always wanted everything out of his mouth to hold as much impact as possible; as such, he wasn't impressed by this pre-empting and did his best to ignore it. "Who do you suppose was a classmate of Kazan's all those years ago?" he asked dramatically.

"Not Daniel," was John's scathing response. He put down the paper. "I doubt he can read and write properly. Renae?"

"Renae. And while a person might change somewhat in seventeen years, I absolutely refuse to believe that she honestly didn't know his picture when she saw it."

John frowned. "You know, it _is_ possible," he said. "I mean, theoretically. People do look quite a lot different once they're dead. I wouldn't necessarily know everyone I took a class with seventeen years ago if you showed me a picture of their decidedly dodgy-looking corpse."

"I thought we'd established that your visual memory is sub-par, John."

John rolled his eyes. "When did we establish that?"

"Years ago," was the vague response. "We need to go back out to the Jestyns, John. Tomorrow. I need to interview Renae again."

John glanced at Molly. A significant look passed between them; Molly held his gaze for a few moments before he sighed. "A day trip," he stipulated. "I know that's going to be a hell of a lot of driving, but we're not going overnight. Not this time. Why can't you just call them?"

"You know why. I need to see people when I'm interviewing them. Lestrade's not available, so it's going to have to be you and I. I'll meet you here at seven tomorrow morning. We'll drive."

"... In what? You don't have a car."

"No, but Mycroft has three."

John blinked. "Mycroft's lending you one of his cars?"

"He owes me a favour."

"For what?"

"For my letting him give James Moriarty my life story, if you really have to know."

John flinched, as Sherlock knew he would. Even months after finding out that Sherlock wasn't dead and Mycroft hadn't betrayed him, he couldn't look on the situation with an unemotional eye. He doubted there would ever be a time when he could.

* * *

Only Sherlock Holmes would think a BMW was an appropriate vehicle for a road trip to a Somerset farmhouse. Though, John reflected as he got in the passenger-side door at seven the following morning, perhaps a two-year-old Beemer was the _least_ posh car Mycroft owned, and it had been down to this or letting Sherlock borrow the Ferrari.

"Day trip," was how he greeted his friend. "I'm serious. I don't want to get there and have you announce that we need to interview anyone and everyone and have to stay overnight."

Molly hadn't come out to the drive to bid him farewell - that was a bit excessive for a day trip - but he'd kept Sherlock waiting for a few minutes while he drove his wife insane with last-minute goodbyes and call-me-if-you-need-me-s.

"Might be back late," Sherlock said calmly as they pulled out of the street. "Though I daresay I could get you home this side of midnight."

"Why late?"

"Bit more to do in Somerton than I originally thought. Lestrade sent news late last night- they've found the copy of the Rubaiyat that the page was ripped out of. Odd place to find it, though."

"And where was that?" It was beyond hope that Sherlock would ever just tell news in a linear fashion. He had to string the bait along...

"A local doctor by the name of Scott found it in the back seat of his car," he finally said with obvious relish. "It was parked in his own driveway at the time."

"You mean the car wasn't locked?"

"Apparently not. I'll leave you to chat with him this afternoon, shall I?"

* * *

There was time to prepare for the "chat" with Dr. Scott; Sherlock's first priority was the Jestyn farm. It was after ten when they finally reached it via the dusty lane; as John got out of the car he checked the paintwork and polish.

_Terrific. Mycroft will be thrilled._

The dogs again; but this time they were no real threat, and didn't need to be called off from any impending attack. Daniel Jestyn had only to open the screen porch door before they scattered.

"Ah, Mr. Jestyn," Sherlock called up to him in faux-polite tones that John knew well. Daniel was about to be blindsided by brilliance. "Nice to see you again."

"Where's Detective Inspector Lestrade?" Daniel demanded mistrustfully as Sherlock shut and locked the car door behind him.

"In London," was his casual answer. "He's a busy man and can't drop everything and come out here on a whim. Dr. Watson and I will be making enquiries for today. Need to ask you and your wife some more questions, Mr. Jestyn."

"You can ask me anything you like," Daniel said. "Renae's in Glastonbury visiting her mother."

Even Sherlock wasn't able to hide his expression on hearing the news. "Oh, I see," he said calmly. "And how long is she away for, if you don't mind me asking?"

"Don't know."

"You don't know how long your wife's going to be away from home?" John asked him, with more disbelief in his voice than Sherlock liked. He shot over a look that John knew well: _shut up._

Daniel shrugged. "I'm not her keeper, and her Mum's not well. I can give you the phone number if you're so desperate for it."

"I can find that anywhere," Sherlock said. "Never mind. We do have some questions for you, though, Mr. Jestyn. May we come in?"

Daniel showed them into the kitchen. However long Renae Jestyn had been away, John thought it had to have been a few days at least. The last time they'd been here the kitchen had smelled like lemons and a faint, clean, bleachy sort of scent; today it reeked strongly of wet dog. Daniel leaned over, filled the kettle and switched it on. John doubted he was going to bring out the nice tea tray.

"Come through." It was more like an order than an invitation as he herded them into the sitting room, where Renae's books were still sitting innocuously on the shelf. He grunted vaguely and pointed to the sofa. John sat down. Sherlock did not. The sofa smelled like wet dog, too.

"How can I help you?" he asked Sherlock, who he'd evidently concluded was DI Lestrade's 2IC for the occasion.

"Well, unless you can spirit your wife back into the nearby vicinity, I think your ability to help might be limited." Sherlock sounded miffed. "All the same, we need to ask you where you were on the night of the murder, Mr. Jestyn."

Daniel smiled, his oversized teeth making a frighteningly abrupt appearance. "Can't help you there, gentlemen. If you reckon I did it, I'm afraid I'm in the clear. I came off work at six in the morning that day."

"What time did you start work?" John asked him.

"Ten. It's all on CCTV, you can ask. I work for Jager's in town. Packaging. Production-line stuff. I did have a smoke break at three, but it'd take me more than five minutes to get home, let alone murder someone and get back."

"Did you notice anything odd when you came home that morning?" Sherlock persisted.

Daniel was about to reply when there was a loud clatter from the kitchen. All three of them looked up; through the open doorway they could see Nicholas standing in the middle of the floor, among the wreck and ruin of the kettle full of water that he'd just managed to knock off the bench.

"For God's sake, Nick!" Daniel stormed over, grabbing the boy by his shoulder until he yelped and then dealing him a sharp crack across his ear. "I have bloody _had it_ with you ruining everything you touch! Can't you ever do anything right?!"

"Hey!" John had stood up; his tone stopped Daniel short. He turned, but John was not put off by his bristling. "Whoa, what the hell are you doing? I saw what happened, it was an accident. Just an accident. There's no need to go hitting him."

"How about you mind your own business?" Daniel snarled. "He's my kid, and I'll punish him however I like." He pushed Nicholas in the direction of the kitchen door. "Go on, just get out before you ruin something else."

John took a step forward, then stopped himself with obvious effort. "Jesus. If that's the way you treat your child, I'd hate to see how you treat those poor bloody dogs -"

"John," Sherlock spoke up in sudden serious tones. "Wait for me outside."

John took a few seconds to register what it was that Sherlock had asked him to do. "Wait, _what?"_

"I said, _wait for me outside."_

John stared at him for a moment, honestly wondering if this was some kind of alternative language code that Sherlock had absent-mindedly forgot to tell him about beforehand. Sherlock met his gaze with calm stubbornness. _Wait for me outside._

Sherlock Holmes was never able to fully appreciate the restraint John used when he took a deep breath, turned around, and went out the same door Nicholas had just left by.

"I'm sorry," he could hear Sherlock telling Daniel as he shut the screen door with more force than necessary. "He's not usually like this. Has a lot going on in his personal life right now..."

At some stage, Sherlock was getting punched for that one.

* * *

John stood on the porch for half a minute, taking deep breaths and resisting the urge to find something to kick. Beyond the house the grass sloped down to the little duck pond; he watched as Nicholas Jestyn wandered down nonchalantly and stooped, apparently picking up stones.

John followed him down to the pond, sitting down on a nearby slab of granite that served as a rustic seat. He made no pretence about the fact that he was there, but he didn't speak; the boy threw stones at the water in silence for a few minutes while John watched.

"Did you get kicked out, too?" Nicholas suddenly asked him.

"Yep." John sighed. "You didn't burn yourself with the hot water you knocked over, did you?"

Nicholas shook his head, then threw another stone. John watched its trajectory, such as it was, before it sank with a depressing _plink._

_He's not holding his wrist properly._

_Shoulder joint's not great either._

_Ligament damage, probably from a recently dislocated shoulder._

"Skipping stones?" he enquired genially. The boy turned to him.

"What does it look like?"

"Looks like you're not having much luck," John retorted. He wasn't prepared to take grief from the kid he'd been humiliated trying to defend. He stood up.

"Like _you'd_ know," was the contemptuous answer.

"Hey, I used to be very good at this when I was your age, thanks."

"When was that? The Stone Age?"

John smiled. "Wonderful, mystical period known as the Eighties," he said, careful to concentrate his attention on the duck pond and not the boy. "I'll tell you what. I bet I can skip this stone..." he stooped to pick up a smooth white pebble from among the gravel at his feet... "all the way to the other side of the duck pond."

"Bet you're full of it."

"You're a charming one, aren't you?" John commented. "Fine. Watch."

The last time he'd tried this, he reflected, was long before he'd been shot. Twice. That, and a space of over twenty years, had probably not done him any favours, even if he _was_ using his right arm. Still, wasn't it all in the eye anyway?

He shaded his hand against the glare for a second, judging the distance to the other side of the pond. It wasn't a particularly long way - not for an adult. Taking note of where he needed the pebble to land, he took a step forward and flicked the pebble out of the palm of his hand.

It skipped four- five- six times; in seconds it had slammed into the far bank of the pond, sending the gravel flying.

"Holy shit!" Nicholas exclaimed.

John decided to ignore his choice of language. He picked up another stone and threw again. The boy's mouth dropped open as he watched the second stone hit the far bank. The first hadn't been a lucky throw.

"It's not really how hard you throw," John explained to him. While Nicholas' attention had been riveted on the stone, he'd glanced across and seen that his pixie-like ear was bright crimson from the slap Daniel had given him. "It's in the shoulder. And I guess yours hurts a bit right now?"

"What do you mean?" Nicholas asked warily.

_He sounds frightened._

"Well, you're not holding it properly," he went on genially. This time he decided to throw with his left hand; theoretically his "good" side, though he generally only ever used that hand for writing. The stone skipped twice and then sank.

Oh, well. You couldn't win at everything.

"It's okay." He was careful not to look across at Nicholas, who'd taken the comment about his shoulder as an affront and wasn't sure how to react. "I'm a doctor; I can tell. Dislocated it, did you?"

Nicholas thought for a significant second, then nodded.

"How did you manage that?"

"I fell off my bike."

"Ouch," John said. "Yep, I know what that feels like. Fell off a few bikes in my time. So I guess you would have had to have had that fixed up at a hospital, right?"

Before Nicholas could respond, there was a sudden racket from the house above; Sherlock had come out of the screen door. "John!" he called down as he made his way to the car.

"Sorry," John told Nicholas. "I've got to go. Might be back when your Mum comes home. I don't know. Look after your shoulder..."

He paused. _Maybe I should give him my phone number - John, what the hell are you thinking? You can't just give an eleven year old boy your phone number, he'll think you're a creep._

"John, hurry up!"

"Guess that's my marching orders," he muttered. Sherlock had reached the car and had started to huff. "Might see you again. Take care of yourself."

He made his way up the slope, regretting those last few words. Nicholas Jestyn couldn't take care of himself. He was eleven years old.

* * *

"What the bloody hell was _that_ all about?" Sherlock demanded as soon as he'd started the car engine and John had belatedly shut the car door behind him.

"Are you blind? He hit him on the side of the head!"

"So?" Sherlock spoke distractedly as he backed the car out of the lane.

There was a few seconds of aghast silence. "Sherlock, did you just say 'so'?"

"Yes. So?"

"So you _never_ hit a kid on the head! I don't care if they're dropping things or kicking puppies, you just don't do it. Do you know the sort of damage you can do to a kid when you clap him over the ear like that? Dislocated jaw... cheekbone fracture... punctured eardrum... _brain damage_..."

"I hardly think Daniel struck him hard enough to cause brain damage, John."

"That's not the point - Sherlock, _seriously?_ Do you actually mean what's coming out of your mouth, or are you just trying to be provocative again? That kid is in _danger_."

"Oh, really? And just how could you possibly deduce that from one incident?"

"Because I spent a ridiculously long period of my residency being taught to pick the signs of child abuse, that's how! He's recently dislocated his arm- he told me he had- and the ligaments have healed badly. Very badly. You should see him try to throw a stone. He told me that he'd done it falling off his bike. But you can't dislocate a shoulder in that way by that kind of a fall. And when I asked him if he'd been in hospital with it, he didn't answer- his mother is a _nurse_ , Sherlock, you don't think it's plausible that after Daniel yanked it out of place pulling him by the arm like _we just saw him do_ , she didn't put it back for him? Have you got any idea how _painful_ that would be? Especially for a kid-"

Sherlock sighed heavily. "John, I realise you're feeling ridiculously paternal right now, but you are severely impeding the progress of this investigation. You're supposed to be the one getting around Daniel and Renae, not accusing them of child abuse."

"All right, pull over."

Sherlock paused for a second. "Sorry, what?"

"I said, _pull over."_

"Why?"

"Because we're having a row, it's about to get worse, and I don't want you driving a car while I'm shouting abuse at you, so _pull over."_

By this time Sherlock had already slowed down the car, looking for a grassy shoulder to park on. The second the car stopped John released his seatbelt, but did not get out.

"Just when I think you've become more human, _this_ happens? What is _wrong_ with you, Sherlock? I'm not trying to wreck your investigation. I think they're abusing their kid!"

"And I've already _told_ you that Nicholas is not in any significant danger. A clap over the ear from a frustrated, boorish father who's spent the week alone with him does not equal systematic abuse in the way that you think. Why don't you let me be the detective?"

"Because your idea of being a detective is to not give a shit about people who get in the way of your investigation," John snapped at him.

Sherlock was silent for a few seconds; then he cleared his throat. "Well," he said. "I'm glad you finally got _that_ opinion of me out of your system..."

"Oh, for God's sake, don't act like _you're_ the victim here."

"I'm not acting like the victim," Sherlock responded, gritting his teeth. "I'm acting like a consulting detective who is _trying to solve a murder_."

John put his face in his hands for a few seconds and took a deep breath. "Sherlock," he said in calmer tones. "That guy - Yakiv Kazan - is dead. He's going to stay dead, whether you solve the mystery or not. Nicholas Jestyn is alive, and I'd quite like him to remain that way. I know that human lives aren't really your priority, but come on."

Sherlock was silent for a few seconds. "So now you think Nicholas' life is in danger? You're getting far ahead of yourself," he finally said. "It's clear that you intend to take this further. I'm asking for two days, John."

"What?"

"I need you to hold off doing your little child-abuse report for two days while I track down Renae Jestyn in Glastonbury and put it to her that she knew the dead man well. After that, you can be as alarmist as you like."

"No."

"No?"

"No, Sherlock. I'm filing the report as soon as we get back to London. I can't _believe_ you would -"

John was suddenly cut off by his phone ringing. Instinctively he pulled it out and looked at the caller ID, then answered it. Sherlock, blatantly listening in from beside him, knew that John would interrupt a row to answer the phone to only two people: Molly or Harry.

This was Harry, though John's initial blurt of "oh my God, are you serious? When?" wasn't really an indication either way.

John got out of the car and wandered back to the rear of the vehicle, though Sherlock could still hear every word of what was being said - from his end, at least. Harry's end opened up a vista of interesting possibilities.

"Look, calm down," John was saying down the line. "No, of course it won't... you know I won't allow that to happen... Yes, of course we'll... yes, we'll go, Harry. I just _said_ that, didn't I? Tomorrow. Yes."

_What could John be accompanying Harry to at short notice?_

"Listen, I'm in the middle of Somerset and I'm going to be home in about three hours or so. In the meantime, I want you to go over to the house... Molly's home. I'll give her a call and let her know to expect you. Just go over and talk to her for a bit... no, you're _not_ okay to be on your own."

_Distressed._

"Get a cab and head over. Molly will pay for it when you get there. I'm going to call her now, and I want her to be able to call me in half an hour and let me know that you're safe there."

_Very distressed._

"Call a cab... no, wait. I'll call one _for_ you, Harry. All you need to do is make sure you've got your keys and you're wearing shoes. Wait for the cab, okay? I'll see you soon..."

Sherlock didn't hear anything in the way of "goodbye", but John had never been strong on phone farewells. There was a pause; in the rear-vision mirror, Sherlock watched John put his phone in his pocket, run his hand through his hair and take a deep breath. After a second breath he got back into the front passenger seat, shutting the door in a businesslike way.

"That was Harry," he announced unnecessarily. "I'm sorry, but we're going to have to give Dr. Scott's a miss. Our father just died."


	7. Night

Sherlock drove in silence while John ordered the cab and called Molly: _Dad died this morning, Harry just got word from the hospital in Chelmsford.* She said something about his pancreas... she's on her way over. Try not to let her stress you out, we'll be home as soon as possible. Yeah, there's money on top of the fridge to pay for the cab... Tuesday afternoon... we'll talk about that when I get home. Love you. Bye._

After he'd disconnected the call, John had looked out the window in silence for a few minutes while Sherlock watched him out of the corner of his eye.

Interesting. John wasn't giving off the impression of an upset stoic who was trying to hold up emotionally. He was giving off the impression of someone experiencing a minor inconvenience. But then, Sherlock had to privately admit to himself that reading the emotions of others was not his strong point. He was starting to see John's position about the Jestyn kid, but was still convinced he'd been overreacting...

"Are you all right?" he finally asked him.

John stirred. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I'm fine. Just thinking."

"Can I... help...?" Sherlock struggled to remember what it was that ordinary people were supposed to say on just such an occasion.

"You can, actually," John said in practical tones. "Funeral's the day after tomorrow. Harry wants to go tomorrow... and I imagine we'll have to deal with the house and estate as well as the funeral. Should only be gone overnight, though. Keep an eye on Molly for me?"

Sherlock ruminated on this. How much of an 'eye' could he keep on Molly, anyway? She barely spoke to him. "All right," he finally said. "Um. John, I could be wrong, but isn't a family funeral the sort of thing a man would usually take his wife to?"

"In this heat, and her condition? Asking for trouble. There's no need for her to come. She never met the man, and I'm hardly devastated and in need of comfort."

"I noticed."

"What's _that_ supposed to mean?"

"It's supposed to mean 'I noticed.'"

The only sound for a minute or two was the purr of the engine.

"How long has it been?" Sherlock asked, trying to deduce it from observing John at the same time as keeping the car on the road. "Since you've seen him, I mean. Twenty years?"

John was silent.

"He was an alcoholic, wasn't he."

"Shut up, Sherlock."

"Did he hit Harry?"

"Shut _up,_ Sherlock!"

"No," Sherlock murmured. "No. It wasn't Harry, was it?"

"Sherlock, if you say another word to me for the rest of the trip home, I'm going to get out of this car and make my own way back." John's hand was clutching the door handle. "Don't make the mistake of thinking I'm kidding. Just shut the hell _up_."

Sherlock glanced across at John, seeing how his right hand was bunched into a tight fist and his left still clutched the door handle. He was breathing quickly and blinking rapidly.

Sherlock decided to shut the hell up. Neither of them spoke for the remainder of the trip.

* * *

It was seven that evening when Mycroft finally arrived home from a twelve-hour day at work. The Yemen hostage was still alive, so far as the government knew, and the delicate situation was taking almost all of his attention and energy these days. He'd just poured himself a tumbler of whisky and was going to settle down with the evening newspaper when there was a crunch of gravel outside and car headlights beaming into the front windows. Sherlock was back with the car.

He sighed tolerantly; after all, he'd asked Sherlock to return it as soon as possible. He was puzzled, though, by how quick Sherlock's step was on the walk outside, and even more puzzled when his little brother barged in the front door without knocking.

"Good evening," he greeted him calmly. "Successful day of sleuthing?"

But Sherlock ignored this. "Mycroft," he said on his way to the study, "there's got to be something here..."

"Something here about _what?"_ Mycroft groaned and followed him into the study. He reached the doorway, whisky in hand, just in time to see Sherlock pull a drawer out of the desk and empty it onto the floor. Papers fluttered down to the floor like birds. He got down on the floor and started searching among them, growling in frustration when his search apparently came up empty.

All the while, Mycroft was seeking answers from his brother. _Fingertips- he's been typing with his right hand while smoking with his left... six... no, seven cigarettes over the last three hours. Dust on the sleeves- he's been searching through books at that nasty little flat he lives in. Slightly irritated skin on the right ear- been on the phone for some time. Cuffs on the insteps of his shoes indicate he's been climbing, but indoors; there's nothing on the treads of the soles. Climbing a bookcase? To the best of my memory, that's the only thing in the flat he might find difficult to reach on his own._

"You do realise," he said calmly, sipping his whisky, "that if you bothered to tell me what it is you're searching for, I'd have a much better chance of finding it in my own house than you do."

"I'm searching for _anything..."_ Sherlock had upturned a second drawer and was sifting through it with his long, deft fingers. "A photograph. A card. I'll settle for a signed receipt at this point. Anything, beyond a name on my birth certificate, that proves my father was real..."

"Sherlock..." Mycroft spoke with unaccustomed softness as he watched Sherlock grab a photo album from a nearby bookshelf and sift almost frantically through it. "You know Mummy got rid of all of that."

"She can't have got rid of all of it!"

"She did. I watched her do it."

"How completely irresponsible of you!" Sherlock dropped the photo album on the floor at his feet, where it landed with a satisfying _whump._ He grabbed another and flicked through it. "Come on, Mycroft. A _photograph_..."

"In thirty years," Mycroft commented calmly, "you have never before asked about our father. Not once. Why now?"

"Because John's father... he... " Sherlock dropped the second album. _Whump._

"I fail to see the connection, Sherlock."

Sherlock put his head in his hands for a second, then covered the gesture by roughing up his hair. "All right, fine. Because I don't remember him," he blurted out.

"Of course you don't remember him," Mycroft told him awkwardly. "You were four." **

"I remember things from when I was _two_ ," *** Sherlock retorted. "Clear, proper memories. And absolutely none of those memories have our father in them. Not a face, not a voice. There's a place in my head labeled, 'Dad', and it has _nothing in it_... except a facsimile of my birth certificate..."

Mycroft was only mildly surprised about the gap in Sherlock's memory. After all, Antony Linwood Holmes had been so often away on business that he had barely made an impression on _Mycroft's_ memory.

"Is he still alive?" was Sherlock's next blunt demand. Mycroft sighed.

"I don't know," he said. "He'd be eighty-one years old, if so..."

"You've never tried to find him?"

"Have you?" Mycroft watched Sherlock flinch and had a rare moment of regretting his choice of words. "I did make some enquiries, years ago," he admitted. "The only thing I could ascertain was that he no longer worked in Her Majesty's Secret Service, which was frankly unsurprising. As you can imagine, a man with a career in being unknown would find it easy to retire in peace. I don't know where, Sherlock... _Sherlock,_ throwing things around my study is not going to help..."

"Please, Mycroft. You've got to have something. Anything."

Mycroft was always taken aback when Sherlock said 'please' anything. It was a sure sign of how desperate his little brother was. He sighed. "All right," he said. "There's one very small thing. Wait here."

Mycroft was possibly the only person in London who still maintained a working, though rather ancient, VCR player. He spent some time setting it up, since he rarely watched his own television. "Do you remember," he said over his shoulder to his impatient brother as he set up output channels, "that Super 8 video camera I owned as a teenager?"

The camera hadn't been Sherlock's; therefore, he hadn't bothered to retain any of that information. He shrugged.

"I had some of the movies converted to video years ago. This is the only one that will shed any light- do stop bouncing around like a toddler, Sherlock. Sit down. And please don't be disappointed. I do warn you that it isn't much."

Mycroft started the tape and backed away from the television to give Sherlock a clear view. The Holmes estate, circa 1979- all washed-out colours and silent, choppy footage. Sherlock, aged approximately one, was the star of this show. It was clearly summer; baby Sherlock was wandering around the grass on the back lawn of the estate, barefoot and wearing nothing but a nappy. There were adults in the background, clearly having some sort of an outdoor party- drinks and _hors d'oeuvres._ None of those adults seemed particularly interested as Sherlock Devereaux Holmes ventured forth, an intrepid little explorer of the world.

For the first few seconds of the footage, Sherlock seemed completely wrapped up in his own little world of keeping his feet among the dandelions. Then he saw the camera. For a second he looked abashed. Then he leaned forward inquisitively, hands on chubby knees, looking directly at the lense through dark curls that even at that age were rampant.

The serious, grey-eyed tot broke into a smile- all crooked baby teeth and sticky dimples- and stuck his tongue out in delight.

Then, disaster struck.

Baby Sherlock got too overconfident; his knees wobbled and he lost his balance, falling backwards onto his well-padded backside.

Most babies would have cried. Sherlock simply looked alarmed and then stared at his outstretched legs in wonder, as if to say, _what caused this sudden support failure? I'll have to experiment a bit more._

The camera was put down onto the grass, showing a low angle of what happened next. Mycroft, already a tall and heavy pre-teen, came into view and set his brother on his feet. He dandled him for a minute, smiling as Sherlock got the idea of one-foot-after-another. Then he left Sherlock to it and went back to his camera, picking it up.

As the camera angle swooped upwards, present-day Mycroft paused the tape. "There," he said. "That's Dad there."

In the background of the shot, and almost obscured by motion blur, a man was standing on the terrace. Sherlock made out eggshell-blue trousers and a white shirt. Like his son, he was built like a greyhound and had a mass of dark curls, though even the poor quality of the picture couldn't hide that his hair had already begun to grey, and was accentuated by large, prominent sideburns. He was facing slightly away from the camera and his features couldn't be made out. There was a drink in his hand, and he was talking to a slim young woman in a purple dress, with dark hair flowing down her shoulders.

"I told you it wasn't much, Sherlock." Mycroft was unnerved by Sherlock's silence. But Sherlock was concentrating on the image and appeared not to hear him.

"Who's he talking to?" he wanted to know. "That's not Mummy." Philippa Devereaux-Holmes had been a blonde, though so far back as Sherlock's memory went, she'd helped that along with hair dye. A glance at his birth certificate proclaimed the reason- Mummy had already been forty-three years old when Sherlock was born. She had never hid the fact that she regarded her spare heir as less an "unexpected surprise" and more a "nasty shock."

"No," Mycroft agreed. "But I don't know who that is. This was your first birthday party, as I recall. There were a lot of people there..."

Sherlock had commandeered the remote control by this time. He rewound and watched the two-second image, four, six, nine times. Mycroft watched in increasing discomfort as Sherlock uploaded that brief glimpse of his father to a place in his hard drive where years couldn't fade it and spite couldn't delete it. Then he pressed _stop_ and _eject;_ he tucked the tape into the inner pocket of his coat, and Mycroft did not stop him.

"I'll leave you to the rest of your evening, Mycroft," he said politely. "I can see it's been a long and trying day for both of us."

Before Mycroft could suggest that he stay a while longer, Sherlock had already reached the hall. Defeated, Mycroft listened to his quick, determined step, and the creak of the front door before it shut.

* * *

John had taken Harry over to Mrs. Hudson's for the evening, stopping by her own house on the way to pack a bag for the overnight trip 'home' and the funeral. Molly had seen them off, agreeing that it was a matter of practicality for all concerned- the sofa was not a comfortable bed, and Harry was in no state to spend the night on her own. Tacitly, Molly understood that there was more to it than this, though. Mrs Hudson didn't just have a spare-room bed. She had comfort for Harry that John could not give her, no matter how much he might want to.

He was very quiet all evening; when he spoke, it was pure logistics. They were taking the 9:23am train from Paddington the next morning, and should arrive in their hometown of Great Leighs, Essex, by no later than one in the afternoon. They'd only be gone for one night. The funeral was at two in the afternoon, the day after tomorrow, and they'd be travelling home as soon as they could pack up and give the house keys back to the solicitor in Chelmsford. No sweat. He was only going because Harry wanted to, and he couldn't very well let her go on her own.

"Might I come with you, John?" she asked him timidly, once. He looked at her for a few seconds and shook his head.

"No, Lolly," he sighed. "It's... not necessary... and not a good idea. The stress and the heat might bring the baby on, and no child of mine is going to be born in Essex." He smiled wryly. "Besides, the cats would never forgive us if we both left at such short notice."

She mused on all of this. He was right, of course. In a practical sense, if nothing else.

"I just want to be there for you," she murmured.

"I know." She was typing something on the laptop at the kitchen table at the time; he came over to kiss her. "But it's really... not needed. I hated him yesterday, and all because he's dead today doesn't mean I don't still hate him."

* * *

They turned in to bed early; John had an early start and even Molly had to reluctantly admit that she was tired. John fell asleep quickly enough; he was snuffling in a deep sleep before she finally sank into a much lighter one. The night was muggy. Sleep wasn't coming easily to her these days.

It was half-past one when Molly woke again. As was usual in the early hours, the little person inside her was kickboxing her bladder, but that wasn't entirely what had woken her. Beside her, John was twitching restlessly. This in itself wasn't particularly unusual. It became so when she was in the adjoining bathroom and heard a hoarse, choked cry.

_Oh, God. We're back to night terrors again._

Years ago, Molly had sometimes gone to the spare room that had been John's to pull him out of the pit of some horrible dream; only twice had this happened in the time that he'd slept beside her. He was still in the midst of it as she came back into the room; she got into bed beside him and put her arms around him. Constrained, he shuddered and woke with a gasp.

"John," she murmured, clutching the bewildered man tighter. "It's all right. You're safe. You're safe with me. It's all right..."

He held onto her, shaking and breathing in short, sharp gasps. She kissed his damp forehead and was silent for a few minutes.

"Who was it, John?" she asked when the trembling eased.

"Sher- Sherlock," he got out.

She felt herself slightly relieved. Sherlock was, after all, alive. The memory that tore John up in the darkness was one that had never happened.

And one she had helped Sherlock plant in John's head.

She reached across him awkwardly for the phone. "Okay," she said calmly. "Sherlock's fine, John. He's completely fine. I'm going to call him, and you can talk to him right now, okay?"

"It's... it's half past one in the morning..."

"He's probably still up... and he won't mind if he isn't." She was dialling the number instinctively in the dark; once she heard the purr of the ringing line she put the receiver into his hand. "Talk to him, John."

She waited for him to blurt out, "Hi, Sherlock, um... did... did Harry get settled in okay?" before going down to the kitchen to make him a cup of tea.

Sherlock wasn't an idiot. He knew what was going on.

* * *

She was downstairs for fifteen minutes, fussing over the teacups and both cats, who were wide awake and playing ambush games around the sofa. She left them both there when she took the tea back to John, who was wrapping up the call as she tapped gently on the door with her fingers. He put the receiver down and took a deep breath, then took the hot cup out of her hands.

"Thank you," he said, briefly but with real gratitude. She watched in unashamed concern as he took a few sips. His hands were still shaking slightly. He put the teacup down, and she sat beside him on the edge of the bed and put an arm around him, laying her chin on his shoulder.

"I love you," she said softly.

"Oh God, why?"

"I don't know." She kissed his shoulder. "You know, with all the other men I've gone out with... and with Sherlock... I had a list of reasons why I thought I loved them. Why they were so good for me and good in general and... with you, there's no list. There never was a list. And there never will be."

"I'm guessing 'tall, dark and handsome' was a permanent part of your list?"

"I never had to tell myself," she went on unperturbed, "that I was meant to be with you because of the way you looked, or the way you dressed, or how clever you were, or what you did for a living... or any other silly thing like that. I never thought of it that way. I don't think like that now. I love you because you're _you._ I don't have to talk myself into that, just like I don't have to talk myself into believing that the sun rises and sets every day. Because it's real."

He was silent for a few seconds, struggling with this. "But I'm such a terrible husband sometimes!"

"You're such a _wonderful_ husband sometimes," she corrected him. "And you're going to be a great dad."

She'd flicked on a raw nerve, and felt him flinch.

"Yes, you will," she told him, before he had time to say, _No, I won't._ "Baby loves you already. Kicks, _hard,_ every time you talk." She squeezed his hand in hers, then moved it onto her belly. "It's getting kind of irritating, actually. If you could not talk as much..."

He laughed.

"See, there, I told you!"

"Baby's probably trying to get out of there to get away from me."

_"John."_

He was still smiling, but he laid his forehead on her shoulder for a second, taking a deep breath. "I'm sorry. Some days I wonder when... someone... is going to turn around and say, 'only kidding!' and take this all away..."

"Never. It will never happen."

_I will never take this away from you. And if death and Sherlock Holmes couldn't separate us, I'd like to see anyone else try._

* * *

**Author's Notes**

_***** _ _In 'The Blind Banker', John's resume indicates his first hospital work was at Chelmsford, in Essex. My headcanon is that he was born/raised in Essex, not in London._

_****** _ _See my one-shot, 'Leavetaking.'_

_******* _ _See my one-shot, 'Round and Round the Garden.'_


	8. Departure

John spent the remainder of the night sleeping in Molly's arms, her breath tickling at his neck. She was more restless than he was, a kind of protective wakefulness that went on an hour after he'd fallen asleep again; but he did not wake again that night.

It was dawn, and thick sunshine was spilling onto him from a chink in the bedroom curtains, when he next opened his eyes. Molly was not beside him. Blinking in a moment of confusion, he realised that she was at the end of the bed, quietly putting together the suitcase he'd forgotten to pack the night before. His best suit, neatly arranged on a hanger and wrapped in protective plastic, was draped over the foot of the bed.

John took his first deep breath of the day. She looked across at him and smiled a little.

"Awake! For Morning in the Bowl of Night

Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to flight,

And Lo! The Hunter of the East has caught

The Sultan's Turret in a Noose of Light."

John frowned and stifled a yawn. "What's that?" he asked practically, blearily forcing himself to sit up and wincing a little as the memories of the night before suddenly washed over him. A moment of weakness. Moving on.

He had probably better apologise to Sherlock for that stupid phone call...

Molly understood. He knew she wouldn't mention it- not unless he mentioned it first. He stifled another yawn as Toby jumped up on the bed beside him in rapturous, noisy greeting.

Molly was still smiling, but she looked gently exasperated. "That's the first stanza of the _Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam,_ John," she told him patiently. "You still haven't read it?"

"No," he confessed, though he wasn't particularly apologetic about the fact that reading nineteenth century poetry didn't score very highly on his to-do list. "I figured Sherlock probably has that area covered, since he's the one who went to the posh boarding school, not me."

Without pausing, Molly picked up her copy of the Rubaiyat from where it sat on her bedside table and tucked it into John's suitcase. He smiled sleepily.

"Nicely played," he said, rubbing his eyes. "Fine. It'll give me an excuse to not have any awkward conversations with Harry on the train. But I've warned you before, poetry's really not my area. Your attempts to force culture on me are doomed, my love."

"Oh, I don't know," she said with a little smile. "I think those verses you wrote to me when we were in Venice were lovely..."

He frowned in confusion for a few seconds.

"... Oh, _that._ Hey, that is _not_ fair," he protested with a smile. "I thought we agreed that that poetry never existed. It wasn't lovely. It was bloody _awful_. But in my defence, I don't think I was thinking with my brain that week."

She smiled. "I liked it," she insisted staunchly. "But... maybe I wasn't thinking with _my_ brain that week..."

"It was a pretty good week, wasn't it?" John beckoned her over to him and drew her onto his lap, kissing the back of her neck. "And if you're going to bring up a conversation like that, you should have woken me up earlier, Mrs. Watson..."

"There'll be time enough for that." She kissed him deeply, on the mouth; finally she rose and returned to the practicalities of his suitcase, while he got up to get himself together for the day.

"I've called Harry," she said next. "She's up. She's okay."

He frowned. "And by 'okay...'?"

"I mean, she didn't sound very upset. She wasn't crying." Molly paused. "Do you think she'll be... difficult?"

"I don't know," John sighed. "I hope not. I think maybe this has given her a bit of a scare, might help her straighten herself out a bit more."

Molly nodded. "John," she faltered. "It'd only take me a few minutes to pack a bag, you know..."

He got up and went to the foot of the bed, putting his arms around her. "The best thing you can do to help me," he told her, "is to stay here, look after yourself, look after baby, and..." he paused.

"And what?"

He paused again, then shook his head. "It's okay. Never mind."

"You can't do that, John," she told him with a smile. "Come on."

"Um. You could play nicely with Sherlock while I'm gone," he offered awkwardly. "That would help me... you don't have to be his best friend, Lolly. Just... you know. I don't need to worry that you're making one another upset while I'm away."

She looked at him for a few seconds, then nodded. "Okay."

"I've asked him to behave. Try not to let his antics stress you out."

"Antics?"

"There'll be antics. You know there will be. He's Sherlock. He can't help himself."

* * *

"Oh, Mrs. _Hudson_..."

Mrs. Hudson had pulled Harry out of sleep long before her sister-in-law had called; she had carefully but decisively guided the younger woman toward eating, having a shower and getting dressed for the day. John had texted ten minutes ago that he was on his way over; Harry was waiting for him in the front hall. And now, sandwiches.

Mrs. Hudson looked flustered for a second, as she always was when she was scolded for being kind. "The food's very expensive on a train," she explained. "You really didn't have very much breakfast, dear, and I don't know if John would have had time for it either..."

"You may as well take them." Sherlock, bed-haired, barefoot and in his dressing gown, had just come down the stairs. Mrs. Hudson, who had once lamented that Sherlock's mother should have taught her son better and that he would probably be able to burn water, insisted these days that he spend at least one meal a day with her. When he was conscious before midday, this was usually breakfast. Mrs. Hudson had repeatedly suggested that she'd enjoy breakfast with Sherlock a great deal more if he'd have a shower and get dressed _before_ invading her kitchen, but this was probably beyond hope, and she'd always taken whatever effort she could get from Sherlock when it came to looking after himself.

"I, um, thank you," Harry muttered politely, tucking them away in her handbag. Sherlock, watching from the foot of the steps, could practically hear her thoughts. The sandwiches wouldn't go astray. If Harry didn't take care of them, her hollow-legged brother would.

"Now, have you got everything, dear?"

Harry nodded.

"And you're going to be brave for John, and not give him reason to worry about you?"

Harry nodded again, and this time Sherlock narrowly avoided a snort of contempt. Harry didn't give John reason to worry about her. She _was_ a reason to worry about her.

He was just in the middle of deducing from Harry's hands and feet when the last time she'd had a drink was when he heard the car pull up outside, and the door slam as John got out. Harry opened the street door before he had a chance to knock.

"Hi," he said briskly, sidling in and reaching down to pick up her suitcase. "Ready?" He kissed her cheek in greeting.

Harry instinctively scrubbed at the spot with the heel of her hand, then realised. "Oh God, sorry," she blurted out, laughing a little shamefacedly. "Reflex, brother dear. No offence."

"None taken."

Sherlock, watching from the doorway of Mrs Hudson's flat, realised that the affectionate gesture had surprised John as much as it had surprised his sister. _Is that how people behave when...?_

The blurry image of a man with eggshell-blue trousers and long sideburns flashed unbidden through his mind.

Harry went out to the car; John, lingering, caught sight of Sherlock and went over for a quick farewell. "Well, I guess we're off then. Home tomorrow. Don't solve the case without me," he joked gently.

"I don't think there's much danger of that happening," Sherlock said tersely, drawing his dressing gown around himself grouchily. But John was now fidgeting with his watch.

"Listen," he muttered into his chest. "Sherlock... about last night... that phone call. I, um..."

Sherlock looked at him evenly with his keen grey eyes. "I have no idea what you're talking about," he said calmly.

"Sherlock-"

"Do take care, John." Sherlock turned and went inside Mrs. Hudson's flat, softly closing the door.

* * *

Neither John nor Harry spoke for the first twenty minutes of the trip. John, pretending to look out the window, was keeping a close eye on his sister. She sat limply in the seat across from him, ostensibly also staring out the window; she looked tired and a little haggard. But then, John reflected, that had little to do with anything. His own reflection had looked tired and a little haggard when he'd shaved in the bathroom mirror that morning.

Finally she went to her handbag, drawing out a piece of folded white paper and a pen.

"What's that?" John asked her.

"Code," was the vague response. Looking at it upside down, John could see that she'd transcribed the code onto the piece of paper; for fifteen minutes she tried out various letter-substitution methods, grumbling to herself and crossing out each failed theory.

"Give it up, Harry," John told her. "If Mycroft and his people can't figure it out with all of their computer systems and whatever else they have, how do you think _you're_ going to solve it?"

"I'm going to solve it with my _brain_ ," she said acidly. "I do have one, you know."

For a change, John bit down on the punchline Harry had walked directly into: _yes, you do have a brain. Too bad you've soaked it in so much alcohol over the last twenty years._

There was silence for a few minutes. Harry, still poring over the letters, was looking thoughtful.

"What are you thinking?" John gave in and asked her. After all, yes. Harry had a brain, and occasionally used it.

"I'm thinking," she mused, "that if military intelligence wasn't-"

"Shh!"

"Oh, what are you shushing me _now_ for?"

"You don't say things like that out in public!" he hissed at her.

"Fine." She sighed. "But you don't have to be so dramatic about it. Probably nobody on this train even cares. As I was trying to say, if _certain people_ can't decode this, perhaps it isn't a code."

"Well if it's not a code, then what is it?"

"I have no idea at all. In any case, at least I'm making an effort to find out, which is far more than you're doing."

"You know codes aren't my thing," he protested. "Why would I waste time doing that when both Holmes brothers are on it? And anyway, I've got other things to do. Like reading poetry."

"Poetry?"

"Don't get excited. Molly's making me." He stood up unsteadily and pulled the book from his suitcase in the overhead compartment. "Have you read this?" he waved the book at her.

"A week ago, John."

"Great. Hopefully, you can tell me what it means."

"Nope, no idea. It sounds nice, though."

John was flipping through the little white book- a glossy hardcover with some colourful illustrations. Gardens and birds and people in turbans. Sifting backwards, he eventually landed on the first page and read again the words that Molly had greeted him with that morning. Well... yeah. He had no idea what those lines meant either, but they did sound awfully... poetic?

"Noose of light," he muttered to himself. "Nice."

Harry frowned. "Don't you mean 'shaft of light'?"

"Says right here, Harry." He held the book up. "'Sultan's turret in a noose of light.'"

She paused for a few seconds, then got up- more unsteadily than John had, he noted instantly- and started looking through her own luggage, eventually drawing out another scrap of folded paper. "That's not what mine says," she told him. "I'm absolutely sure..." she sat down and unfolded the paper, scanning it for a few seconds. "See," she said. "Here-

Wake! For the Sun, who scatter'd into flight

The Stars before him in the Field of Night,

Drives Night along with them from Heav'n, and strikes

The Sultan's Turret with a _Shaft of Light."_  


They looked at each other.

"So there's two versions of the translation?" John hesitated.

"Well, thanks awfully for that, Captain Obvious," Harry snarked at him. He flinched, as he always did when she mocked his verbal tic of clarifying information like that. "I got that copy off the internet, if you're wondering, and it wasn't some dodgy wiki either, it was a university website of some sort. URL's there." She pointed it out in the margin of the paper.

"What does it all mean?" he asked her. "I assume you know, since you're so bloody clever..."

"I never said I was clever," Harry protested, as if realising she'd needled her brother in a way she'd not intended to. "And I have no idea."

They were silent for a minute or two.

"John," Harry finally spoke again.

"Mmm?" He was still poring over the Rubaiyat.

"How awful would it be if you got murdered because you had the wrong edition of a book?"

* * *

Molly had fully intended to go back to bed and sleep some more after she'd seen John off. Her brain was telling her clearly: five hours of intermittent sleep, particularly with John's night terrors in the middle, was not sufficient. Her body, on the other hand, was telling her that she was feeling more energetic than she had in weeks.

Her cats, meanwhile, were telling her it was high time they were fed. She fed them and then put the kettle on- the day was warming up already, but a cup of tea would still go down well. She made it, but then let it go lukewarm while she was making the bed. She'd washed and dried the breakfast dishes and was midway through washing the kitchen floor when she was suddenly alarmed by the sound of the front door opening, and a firm, purposeful tread in the hall. She realised it was Sherlock only seconds before he appeared in the doorway.

"Oh, hello," she said pleasantly, remembering John's plea for an armistice and almost fiercely determined to do her duty. "John left for the funeral about an hour ago."

"I know."

"How did you...?"

"Key." Sherlock held it up for a second, then slipped it into his pocket.

Molly instinctively glanced over to the key-ring hooks hanging near the fridge. There were three sets of keys to the house. One was on its hook, one was in John's pocket, and the third was kept by Mrs. Hudson. Either Sherlock had pickpocketed Mrs. Hudson, or... "You have a key?" She frowned.

"Oh, sorry, did you not know? Never mind that," he said casually, going over to the kettle to see if it was filled. "You and I have important business today."

"Do we?"

"Yes, provided you still have lab access while you're on... leave." Sherlock cleared his throat a little. "Lestrade had the lab in Street send down samples from the dead man, and they'll be almost useless if they're left for much longer. I don't believe this untraceable poison business. You can trace any poison, so long as you're looking for it. We need to look for it. I need an assistant, and that idiot who's replaced you won't work with me."

Molly hesitated.

"Oh, come _on,_ Molly," he appealed through grit teeth. "This is absurd. Don't think I don't know that you've been bored out of your mind for the past two weeks here with nothing to do. John's not your keeper. He's not even your doctor. And most importantly, he's not here to worry about you."

"I-"

"And _don't_ try to tell me that you're feeling unwell or are otherwise incapable of getting into a cab and walking into the lab at Barts. You're not ill, and you're about as delicate as I am. Do you want to help solve this murder, or do you want to wash the kitchen floor for the fourth time in three days?"

"Um." Molly brushed her hair off her neck. Well, yes, Sherlock had a number of good points. She _did_ have lab access still. And she'd promised John she'd play nicely with his best friend while he was away.

Granted, John almost certainly hadn't meant 'work in the lab all day' as a means of playing nicely with Sherlock. Still, he wasn't here to worry. And she wasn't keen on spending the day at home alone. And she was absolutely dying to get back into the lab...

"I... well. I suppose we could go for a little while..." she trailed off. "But I... I need a shower first."

"More explicit than necessary," Sherlock huffed. "I'll wait."


	9. Laboratory and Conditions

"Good morning, Trevor," Molly greeted her replacement pleasantly, leading Sherlock into the lab. The bespectacled young man, barely thirty and working on his own for the very first time, blinked at her in confusion.

"Yes, I know," she said ruefully. "There's been some urgent business I need to attend to with Mr. Holmes today." She pointedly looked across at Sherlock. "I'm sure- well. I'm sure you've got lots to do in the morgue, or in the computer lab..."

"By that, I believe she means you should make yourself scarce," Sherlock told him. In Sherlock's own mind, this was bordering on polite; his own idea of a blunt response would have been, 'go away.'

Trevor left mildly enough, but as he did so he muttered something that sounded very much like _with great pleasure._ Trevor Johnson was definitely no fan of Sherlock Holmes, and that wasn't surprising. The first time the two had met, Sherlock had asked him whether his addiction to internet pornography affected his work.

Molly ignored, or did not notice, Trevor's attitude, being too distracted by the lab around her. Since he was replacing her for anywhere from six months to twelve months, Trevor had understandably seen fit to move things around in the lab to suit himself. Seeing that she was no longer sure where anything was kept, Molly grimaced.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I had no idea things were in such a state here. I'll need to figure out what Trevor's done with everything before we start. And a cup of tea would be lovely, Sherlock."

It took Sherlock a few seconds to realise that Molly was asking him to _make_ her a cup of tea. She was looking at him with her guileless dark eyes, passive but stubborn. Finally he cleared his throat.

"All right," he conceded, with as much effort as if he'd just agreed to donate a kidney to her. In the years that they had worked together in the lab or in the morgue at Barts, Molly had made Sherlock approximately three hundred cups of tea and coffee, and Sherlock had never made a single one for her. "Fine. How do you-"

"Milk and one sugar. Thank you, Sherlock."

* * *

Despite phone calls from the Yeovil constabulary and from Sherlock Holmes, Lestrade had been adamant- he was not going all the way out to Somerton again for anything short of a dramatic arrest. That Renae Jestyn was back in Somerton and not behaving like a woman about to go on the lam- this was good news. That Dr. Scott, an eighty year old retired endocrinologist, was happy to be interviewed, was even better. But he was sending Sally Donovan over to do that, and that was final.

"Stay as long as you need to, to get all this done," he told her as he gave her her orders, and the keys to the unmarked car, that morning. "I know it's not convenient, but be thorough."

"It's fine, sir."

Lestrade glanced up at her approvingly. He knew that DS Donovan had recently made an active decision to aspire to being DI Donovan, and was therefore doing all the sucking up she could.

"Thanks, I appreciate it. I've been to Somerset quite enough recently. Oh, keep an eye on Dyer, too, will you?"

In Lestrade's absence, Donovan would ordinarily take Bob Thompson, or perhaps Richard Murtagh. But Bob Thompson was still off after a bout of chicken pox caught from his children, and Murtagh was in the Bahamas, so Lestrade had asked for Dyer to go instead. Learning experience. He needed to get stuck into some real police work, after all - in the field, not just the office. And this wasn't telling bereaved parents about the death of their child, after all. Emotionally, right up Dyer's alley.

"An eye, sir?"

"Well, you don't have to spoonfeed him. There's been some..." Lestrade stopped himself. Jake's possible mental state was none of Sally Donovan's business, after all. "He's young," he supplied instead. "I'm sure you remember getting your feet at that age."

That had been before Lestrade's time. He'd come up from Bristol CID nearly ten years ago now, inheriting his team from the now-retired Sam Porter; he still remembered Sally as a wide-eyed constable, not much older than Dyer was now. She'd never struck him as the fragile type, though. Hard as nails. He had to reluctantly admit to admiring that in her.

"Yes, sir."

"Call me with any news. Or problems. Try not to get yourself killed."

This wasn't a particularly likely outcome of a few enquiries over a suspicious death, but Lestrade had made a habit of it: every time he sent any of his team off without him, they were given the same order: _try not to get yourself killed._

"Yes, sir."

"And don't get Dyer killed, either. Hayley'll make a big deal out of it."

* * *

_God, that's given me a turn, seeing the place._

Detouring via the solicitor's in Chelmsford to receive instructions and pick up the keys, John and Harry had finally arrived in Great Leighs a little before midday. Already John felt the pressure of past years on him. They'd stopped at the corner shop to pick up a few essentials to get them through the day, and the woman behind the counter had recognised him. _John Watson! You probably don't remember me. I'm Ben Dickson's mother. You two used to be in Scouts together... oh, he lives in Chelmsford now, works in insurance. Yes, doing well for himself, got a wife and four kids. I'm sorry to hear about your Dad, rest his soul. But it's so good to see you again- it's been, what, twenty-two years?_

And the implication, of course: _so where the hell have you been for two decades?_

That, John felt, was only the start of it. The funeral still had to be endured... and before even that, the homecoming. If one could call it that. The house they were standing in front of didn't feel like home. In fact, for a second John wondered if he and Harry had somehow ended up at the wrong house.

Brickwork roughly the same, and the ledges and awnings hadn't been painted for at least twenty years- but those were about the only similarities that the present-day Watson residence in Church Lane held to its past incarnation. John heaved a sigh as he surveyed the weeds running rampant on the front drive and snaking up the walls to the grubby window panes. The house was going to be sold, and the proceeds split between Harry and himself; before that could happen, he knew a lot of time, effort and expense was going to have to be laid out in getting the place in a condition where anyone in their right mind would want to buy it.

"I hate to see what it's like inside," he muttered. "But then, I suppose we have to. Ready?"

Beside him, Harry shrugged; but he could see she was looking forward to the upcoming ordeal even less than he was. Pulling the house keys out of his pocket, he walked up the weed-choked footpath and unlocked the door, which stuck slightly as he pushed it open.

* * *

"We'll start with the stomach contents." Molly fumbled a little with her latex gloves. "The hair and nail samples will last longer... and they're only going to be useful in the case of a-"

"Poisoning over time," Sherlock finished for her. "Exactly."

"And we're looking for something more acute, from what you and John tell me." Molly winced slightly, putting her hand to her back for a second. "Do you have the toxicology report from Street? I assume they were able to rule out a lot of things if they returned that they couldn't find what poisoned this man."

It had been a long time since Sherlock had worked with Molly in the lab; he blinked in surprise at her no-nonsense tones. But then, of course. She was like that in her element. All of her shyness and uncertainty seemed to melt away when she was doing the work that she loved.

Sherlock produced the report from the inner pocket of his coat and quickly re-read the papers over. "Apparently, stomach contents drew up negatives for nicotine, arsenic, mercury, digitoxin, strychnine, chloroform, cyanide and thallium."

They looked at each other.

"Start from the beginning then, do you think?" Molly ventured, a little timidly.

"Yes." Sherlock sighed. "Given the wide range of outliers. I doubt even the preliminary tests were done correctly, somehow."

He refused to say it in front of Molly Watson, but part of Sherlock still clung to the hope that he'd been right all along. Nicotine poisoning.

* * *

"Well, great," John remarked. "This won't take us very long at all."

They were standing in the front room of the house, surveying the scene. The late John Watson, Sr., had been a number of things; _hoarder_ had never even occurred to his son. It hadn't been like that twenty-five years ago; military precision. A place for everything, and everything in its place. Now, though, everything's place seemed to be where it had been dropped last- newspapers, magazines, plates, cutlery, books, take-out containers, wrappers and, of course, bottles.

John mentally decided that those were going to be the first to go. They were the last thing Harry needed to see right now.

Harry, however, either hadn't registered the bottles or wasn't particularly paying attention to them. She sidestepped piles of newspapers and went over to the front windows, leaning over the sofa and peeping out of the heavy closed curtains.

"Yep," she reported. "I can confirm that the old bitch-"

"Harry!"

" _Mrs._ _Cartwright_ , then, still lives across the street with those horrible cats of hers. Good Lord, she must be a hundred and twelve by now."

"You sure it's her?" John was still looking around the living room. Not much had changed. Same carpet. Same wallpaper. Same photographs... he flinched.

"Totally sure," Harry was saying. "I'd know the evil harridan anywhere. She's out there pretending to garden so she can keep an eye on what's going on over here."

"Maybe she really is gardening." John went to his suitcase, still sitting in the hall, looking for a plastic bag. _Nope_. _Those bottles are going immediately. Especially since some of them aren't empty._

"Gardening in this heat?" Harry continued. "Doubt it."

"Well, let her spy, then." John dumped an empty bottle of Absolut in the plastic bag with a violent and satisfying _clink._ "She won't see much. Unless she can see through walls."

"True. If she keels over from heat stroke, though, _please_ don't go over and revive her."

"You know I have to," he replied evenly. "Unless I don't see it, and you conveniently don't tell me."

"Ugh. She's horrible, and so is that mangy cat... that can't _possibly_ be the same cat she had more than twenty years ago, John. So she's gone and got a clone of it."

John bit down on the urge to scold Harry for her heartlessness. After all, Harry had suffered a great deal during her teen years thanks to Veronica Cartwright. John may have grown up with an abiding hatred of the venomous old woman and her mangy cats- the origins of his lifelong grudge against anything feline until Toby had entered his life- but _he_ hadn't been the one Mrs. Cartwright had slandered all over town as being caught in a compromising position with a girl named Editha Prowse. Poor Harry had effectively been dragged out of the closet a good three years before she was ready. Hard on a teenage girl, and Mum had been... well. Charlotte Watson had loved both her children, fiercely and protectively. But she had never understood her daughter. Harry had hurt her.

John had been surveying the mess and apparently not really paying attention to Harry. By this time, though, his curiosity was well and truly piqued. He went over to where Harry was standing at the curtains and pulled the curtain aside slightly.

"You know," he muttered, "before, I thought you were exaggerating... she _must_ have been younger than we thought she was when we were kids. But she really does look a hundred and twelve. And she's got more than one cat - there's a ginger tabby behind her on the garden wall. I bet she has sixteen of the bloody things."

"You know Molly would have sixteen cats if you allowed it."

He smiled slightly. "Well, maybe not _sixteen_ ," he protested. "Speaking of which, I should call her, just to let her know we got in okay. Oh, and Harry..." he had just picked up the shopping bag that she'd left on the stand in the front hall. "Milk has this thing where it doesn't do well in warm temperatures."

"You could always put it in the fridge yourself."

"What does it look like I'm doing right now?" he called from where he'd gone through the hall into the kitchen. There was a rubbery squelching noise as the fridge door opened, and then a vague noise of disgust from John. Apparently, their father's trail of chaos had extended to the inside of the fridge. "Seriously, maybe we should start with the fridge. I'm kind of afraid to put milk in here."

And this was from a man who had been happy to drink beer that had been located next to human feet in the fridge of 221B Baker Street.

* * *

Sherlock was not sociable at the best of times; he was particularly terse when he was working. As a result, he and Molly had worked virtually all morning in silence, or near silence; the occasional relevant bit of scientific information passed between them. It was half-past twelve when he was startled out of his concentration by the trill of Molly's phone.

_Damn it._

John. Sherlock did not have to make any other deductions on who the caller might be. By his own calculations, John and Harry had only just arrived in Great Leighs. And he also knew that Molly would never lie to John about her involvement with him ever again. The afternoon was as good as lost.

"Hello...? Hi, John."

Sherlock noted curiously, and not for the first time, that Molly had never had any sort of cutesy pet name for her husband.

"I'm at Barts..." Sherlock winced. "Yes, Sherlock wanted me to help him have a look at the samples from the dead man that were sent from Street... not yet, but we've managed to eliminate quite a lot so far. I'm fine. Really. It's nice being here in the air conditioning. How's everything there...?"

Sherlock zoned out and returned to his test tubes while Molly took in everything that John and Harry had been up to. It wasn't that he didn't care... actually, he reflected, it was that he really didn't care. Or rather, he didn't care about what he assumed they were doing- visiting a small village to attend a funeral. Boring. Not much to say about that, though John was finding an awful lot, apparently.

"And Harry's okay...? Oh, good. I'm so glad to hear that..."

Sherlock blinked in momentary alarm when his own phone buzzed in his breast-pocket, just over his heart. He drew it out and glanced at the caller ID. Lestrade.

"Lestrade. News?" He wandered out to the corridor to hear him better.

"Yeah, call just came in. Donovan and Dyer have interviewed Dr. Scott."

"And?"

"Pretty sure we can eliminate him as a suspect. They've been doing a bit of asking around... apparently it's quite common for people in Somerton to leave cars and houses unlocked, even overnight. Small village ethics, everyone knows everyone else. They haven't had a single murder in the place since the reign of George II."

"Well, they have now."

"The other thing," Lestrade went on, ignoring him, "that they found was interesting is that the car was robbed."

"Robbed? Why did nobody tell me?"

"Apparently the old doctor never thought to mention it before Dyer asked... he barely noticed. Whoever left the book also pinched a roll of mints and a half-drunk bottle of water out of the glove compartment. Weirdest robbery I've heard of in a while."

Sherlock was silent for a few seconds, thinking. "Anything else?"

"Not yet. They're on their way to interview Renae Jestyn now."

"Oh, I can only imagine how well she and Sergeant Donovan are going to get along."

"Give Donovan a bit of credit, Sherlock, she knows her business. Anyway, I'll let you know as soon as I hear anything on what they find, okay?"

"Okay."

Sherlock hung up- he was not big on standard greetings and farewells. He pushed the swinging lab door open and went back in to where Molly seemed to be wrapping up her call with John.

"Yes... I love you too..."

Sherlock rolled his eyes.

"Yes, I'll put him on. Love you more! Bye!"

She held the phone out to Sherlock, who reluctantly took it and grit his teeth before answering.

"Sherlock, what are you doing?" John demanded.

"Solving a murder, or so it would appear. Relax. Molly's fine."

"So she's been telling me." John still sounded terse. "Would it be beyond you to just be sensible, though? Not try any insanely dangerous experiments, get her home at a reasonable hour, stuff like that?"

"I'm not to blame for her work ethic, John."

" _Sherlock_."

Sherlock heaved a sigh. "Fine," he conceded. "We'll leave here at five, if that suits you. So what's been happening with you, then?"

There was a brief pause, as if John was taken aback by the fact that Sherlock had even asked. "Not a lot," he finally replied. "Saw the solicitor, got the keys. Cleaning the house. Planning a eulogy."

"A eulogy?"

"Yeah, you know, when -"

"I know what a _eulogy_ is, John, I was commenting rather on the fact that you seem to be prepared to give one."

"Well, someone has to. You won't get Harry up at the microphone in a thousand years." There was a slightly uncomfortable pause. "Anyway, I've got to go. I mean it, Sherlock, if I find out you're both still there at ten o'clock tonight -"

Sherlock hung up on him.


	10. Fast Flows the Eventide

This being a bigger job than they expected, John and Harry split their resources for the remainder of the afternoon. Harry took downstairs, and John went up to sort out the bedrooms and upstairs bathroom.

If he'd felt confronted by the downstairs portion of the house, though, the floor above was worse. John paused at the door of the master bedroom, taking a deep breath before gently opening the door.

_Oh, God._

There was a clear and obvious human-shaped furrow in the unmade bed.

John took another breath, shut his eyes for a second, and then made himself go over and sit down on that furrow. _Stop being so morbid._

He leaned over to the twenty-five-year-old photograph of his mother that sat on the bedside table, turning it gently down onto its face.

"Okay," he muttered to himself. He was mentally running through what he could remember of one of the first lectures he'd ever sat through, right at the beginning of his university career. The Ethics of Death, or something catchy like that. The gist of it was: _death is normal. It's not disgusting. It's not frightening. It's natural. Death happens to everyone. And if you're going to get squidgy about dead people, don't become a doctor._

It was to be a closed-casket funeral, but he was certain he was going to have to see one more dead person by the end of tomorrow. Private viewing at the funeral home beforehand. Lovely.

"Okay," he said again, this time into his hands. He exhaled. "This cleaning isn't going to do itself."

~~~~

* * *

~~~~Harry had just finished cleaning out the horrifying fridge and scrubbing the downstairs bathroom into a state of pristine cleanliness when it occurred to her: the shuffling and occasional thump of John clearing out the master bedroom had ceased some time before. She mounted the stairs and went up to the bedroom, tapping politely at the ajar door and pushing it open when there was no response.

"Slacking off, dear brother?" she asked lightly.

John was sitting on the bed, a red leather-bound notebook in his hands. He looked up vaguely. "Sorry," he said, gesturing with the notebook. "Found something interesting. Apparently, Dad kept diaries."

"Really?"

He nodded. "I'm up to October, 1988. Not a man of many words, but it's interesting. They started up just after he got back from the Falklands... I..."

He broke off, but the end of the sentence was clear to her: _I wonder if they were meant as therapy._

She sat down gently beside him. "October, 1988," she mused. "Have you... reached the bit about Mum?"

John flinched and shook his head. "That was a little later," he reminded her. "She... went downhill fast."

"Oh. Right." Harry barely remembered that period. There were whole swathes of her life that she could barely remember, but this one wasn't due to the drinking; the drinking had come later. But John had done the best he could to make their mother's last illness as light on his sister as humanly possible.

There was another significant pause. Harry's glance wandered momentarily to the turned-down portrait on the dresser. "Anyway," she said in quite different tones. "So the fridge and bathroom are both fit for human use, and there's coffee downstairs when you want it. What do you want to do about tea?"

John looked at her dazedly, as if the whole concept of an evening meal was foreign to him. "Uh... maybe order something in?" he finally suggested.

"Okay." Harry had apparently said all that needed to be said, but she was still hovering in the doorway uncertainly. John, who'd turned back to reading the diary, looked up at her again.

"What?"

"What are you going to say at the funeral tomorrow?"

He paused, glancing down at the faded diary in his hands. "I don't know yet," he said. "There's a lot I want to say, but I don't think it's appropriate for a funeral."

"Maybe you should just tell the truth."

He snorted. "Pretty sure they'd drag me out halfway through if I started to tell the truth."

She paused thoughtfully, then shrugged. "Anyway. Coffee's downstairs when you're ready."

* * *

"Well, at least we have quite a list of things it _isn't,"_ Molly commented. It was ten past five, and she was struggling out of her gloves and lab coat preparatory to locking up the lab for the evening.

Sherlock merely grunted in annoyance. One of the things it _wasn't_ was nicotine poisoning.

"We'll find it, Sherlock," she reassured him. "We've eliminated the more obvious ones, so we'll narrow it down from here. These things take time. You know they do."

Another annoyed noise. Sherlock Holmes knew all to well that these things did in fact take time. Too much time. It was why he ran a crime scene lab in his kitchen - he was faster than most forensic labs. If he'd had the necessary equipment to process the samples, he'd have simply stolen them from the Barts lab and taken them home. It would not have been the first time he'd stolen body parts from the hospital for private experiments back at the flat.

"I'm not having much in the way of dinner." Molly peeped into her handbag, apparently checking that she had everything before leaving. "But you'll come over for that, perhaps? I know Mrs. Hudson's at her sister's this weekend, so I thought maybe... um."

Sherlock looked at her in silence for a few seconds, processing this. His somewhat-uncertain scan of her body language told her that she was being sincere. The woman who he was absolutely certain still hated him- wanted him to come to her house and share a meal with her.

A... peace offering? Certain cultures around the world used the sharing of a meal as a sign of amity and trust and good will, and -

_She's trying to be nice._

That was all it amounted to. Molly was trying to be _nice_. He had a sudden reflection upon how many times she'd "been nice" in this way for him in the past. He cleared his throat.

"All right," he said awkwardly. "Okay."

* * *

"All right, sad-sack," Harry said brightly, once she'd finally coaxed John to come downstairs and eat some pizza. "That's enough digging around among unpleasant memories for today, I think."

"Long way to go yet." John looked around. Well, Harry could certainly work with a right good will when she put her mind to it- and that was generally when she was trying to put her mind to not drinking. Once he'd cleared the bottles and some of the newspapers, she'd made great inroads downstairs. Hadn't been kidding about the fridge and bathroom. They were spotless. Cleaning-as-therapy: Lottie Watson's favourite coping technique (Dad's had been biting sarcasm), both passed honourably on to John and Harry.

"It'll keep," she said. "I've been scrubbing floors all afternoon and I'm damned if I'm going to do any more before tomorrow morning. I need a break. Come for a walk."

He hesitated. Come for a _walk?_ Harry was one of the laziest people he'd ever known and didn't walk anywhere unless it was to some specific purpose. "Where?" he asked.

"You'll see when we get there."

"Harry-"

"I'm going on my own if you don't come."

Given her high likelihood of falling off the wagon at some point during the trip, John wasn't prepared to have Harry wander off on her own. He grudgingly went to find his wallet and the house keys.

* * *

It was too hot, and Molly was too tired, to be bothered with a proper meal, so she'd made sandwiches for Sherlock and herself.

"So," she said once they'd sat down, she in the armchair and he on the sofa. "We've established that it's not nicotine, strychnine, cyanide, morphine, thallium, sodium, quinine, digitalis or arsenic."

"We're going to have to work quicker than we did today," Sherlock complained, though he was gratefully wolfing down the sandwich. Watching him, Molly wondered idly when the last time he'd had a decent meal was. "So we've eliminated nine toxins. There are hundreds left, Molly. _Thousands_."

"No, we can narrow it down," she said evenly. "Fast acting. Corrosive to the stomach lining-"

"But not to the mouth or esophagus," he reminded her.

"Yes, exactly. Surely that has to narrow things down quite a lot. If I get time I'll see if I can find my old textbooks and have a look through. John might have some textbooks somewhere on poisoning as well." She paused. "Any more news on the code?"

Sherlock shook his head. "Mycroft's people tried the backward letter-substitution you mentioned," he said in tones of quiet triumph. "No lead there. Which means we've made precisely no inroads there at all."

"And Renae Jestyn?"

Mention of Renae Jestyn set Sherlock's teeth visibly on edge. He shook his head in frustration. "Lestrade says Donovan and Dyer took down another statement, but it was almost word-for-word what she told the Yeovil officers the other day."

"She's sticking to her story."

"She knew the dead man. She _knew_ him, Molly. And I'll bet anything that she knew he was in Somerton on the day he died. We just need to prove a connection."

* * *

"Oh my God," John blurted out, breaking into a reluctant smile. "It's still here?"

Harry had led her brother on a familiar, but now very overgrown path, over the back lots of the house and through to a place officially known on the map as Sparrow's Wood. Everyone within a six-mile radius of it called it The Hanging Wood. Something about a suicide there in the nineteenth century...

As a child, John had always wondered if the site of the hanging was the heavy-boughed tree that Harry had brought him to.

"Of course it's still here." Harry leaned back against the trunk, then turned around and laid her cheek and palms against it lovingly for a second. "It's an oak tree, John. It was probably here when the Normans invaded, and it'll be here when our great-grandchildren are born." She paused. Then, in different tones, "eh, well. _Your_ great-grandchildren, anyway."

John ignored this. "I didn't really mean the tree," he protested.

"Oh yes, the treehouse is definitely still here," she remarked cheerfully, looking up at it. The 'treehouse' was, and always had been, little more than a platform with a slanted, sagging roof on one side, though it had undergone a number of necessary repair jobs and structural improvements since Harry had first built it, aged ten. "Want to go up and see?"

John scoffed. "Have you gone mad?"

"Not yet, no, but you're doing your best to get me there. Why not?"

"Because I dread to think what condition it's in when it's been exposed to the elements for thirty - _Harry!"_

"Oh, come on, it's fine." Harry had already started to climb the ladder, which was little more than short planks of wood nailed precariously to the trunk. John watched in silent agony as she ascended. She may have become somewhat unsteady on solid ground these last few years, but she was still, as ever, an enthusiastic and nimble climber. John had a sudden memory of her aged eleven, and doing the same thing... in a dress. He heaved a sigh of relief as he saw her pull herself onto the platform.

"I'm up!" she called in triumph.

"Great!" he called back. "So take a quick look and come down."

"The view is amazing!" she called down jubilantly. "Straight into the setting sun, John. Come up and see it!"

He laughed briefly. "No."

"Why not?"

"Because the last thing I need right now is to fall out of a tree."

"Parts of the platform are a bit dodgy, I'll admit. The rest is fine. You used to climb up here all the time," she reminded him. "Don't tell me you've got _old,_ John, and you're scared of climbing a tree!"

Sherlock Holmes was fairly good at pushing John's buttons; he had nothing on Harry, however, who always knew exactly what to say and how her brother would react to it. He took stock of the ladder for a few seconds, then scrambled up quickly and determinedly, like it was a training exercise. Finally he was on the platform where he found Harry sitting on the edge, legs dangling.

" _Bit_ dodgy," he said tersely, referring to the large hole in the platform near his left foot.

"Yeah, just walk around that bit," she said. "Now for God's sake, come here and look at this gorgeous view, for the first time this century."

"I've seen sunsets this century," John grumbled.

"Well, you've never seen _this_ one. And if you don't see it now, you'll never have another chance."

John obligingly sat down on the edge beside his sister, palm down close to her back in case she- well. It wouldn't have been the first time he'd had to literally yank her up from nearly falling out of a tree. Beyond, amber light was spilling over the sere summer fields and the tops of the trees, trembling slightly in the cool breeze.

Neither spoke for a few minutes.

"What's this?" Harry finally asked in rather unsentimental tones. John looked down to where she was running her finger over some letters carved in the plank: _J.H.W + P.H._ "P.H., hey?" she mused quietly. "Who's-"

"Harry-"

"Paula Hess." She looked up at him, dark eyes dancing. "Oh my God, it's Paula Hess, isn't it."

"Now, look, I-"

"Paula _Hess!"_ she exclaimed in gleeful triumph. "John, you shagged _Paula Hess_ up here! Oh, _yuck_. Tell me where, so I can not sit there!"

John neglected to tell her that if she was going to avoid sitting anywhere he'd shagged Paula Hess, she'd better get out of the tree altogether. "Come on," he protested, smiling shamefacedly. "I was sixteen. And you've had worse, I'm sure."

"No. I'm pretty sure I've never had a worse shag than Paula Hess."

"Hey, don't knock it til you- oh, _God_."

They both burst into almost hysterical giggling, broken only when Harry suddenly gave a racking sob. John stopped, turning to her in some alarm.

"Hey," he said, frowning and resisting the urge to touch her. "Hey, what's all this about?"

She drew a shaky breath, tears flowing in earnest now. " _Don'wan'die_ ," she sobbed.

"Harry, I don't speak Crying. English, please."

"I don't want to _die_ , John!" Another jagged, painful breath. "Made... such a terrible mess of this... I've tried... God knows I've been _trying_ for thirteen years to stop... going to end up... like him..."

John put his arm around her and drew her close. "Hey," he said calmly. "Do you seriously think I'd let that happen to you?"

"But you can't help me..."

"Yeah? Watch me. But Harry, you also have to help _yourself_. Face up to the fact that you have a problem..."

She nodded, sobbing anew.

"I need you to say it, Harry."

"I'm... I'm a m-miserable _failure_..."

John tightened his arm around her slightly. "No, just the truth is fine for now."

"I'm an alcoholic." She took another shuddering gasp into John's shoulder. "I'm an _alcoholic_ , and I don't want to die..."

"And you won't - not for another forty years, at least. We'll figure something out. There's no way that Molly and I are going to pass up on such a cheap, handy babysitter... yuck. Wipe your nose." He pulled a tissue out of his pocket and unfolded it, handing it to her. "And if you ever tell anyone I hugged you, I'm going to tell them you shagged Paula Hess up here."

Harry snorted with laughter - thankfully, into the tissue she held. John was smiling.

"Come on, stop blubbering or I'll push you right off the flet," he told her, getting up. He and Harry had started calling the platform a _flet_ during the summer they'd taken it in turns reading _The Lord of the Rings_ on it. "It's getting on, and we've got a huge day tomorrow. Time we headed back."

* * *

"I wonder how John and Harry are getting on," Molly mused quietly. "I wish I was there. I remember when my dad..." she paused and flinched. "Um. But I suppose it's a bit different with them."

Sandwiches had become coffee; Sherlock stirred his awkwardly. "Molly," he said seriously, " I need to ask you. Why hadn't John spoken to his father in so long?"

She blinked at him in silence and then gave him a confused look, as if questioning why Sherlock wouldn't know. "Maybe you should ask _him_ ," she responded, softly but stubbornly.

Sherlock sighed and rolled his eyes. "If it were easier to, I would."

"I don't think I should go telling about John's personal -"

"This is me you're talking to, Molly. _Me."_

She paused uncertainly, then looked back up at him. It was true. Sherlock Holmes was John's best friend. If he wanted to know, he wanted to know for a damn good reason. "I don't know the whole story," she finally said. "John's dad was in the Falklands, you know."

"I deduced long ago that he was in the armed services in some capacity. PTSD?"

"John's never called it that, but... I suppose it was. John says he can't really remember what his dad was like before he went off, but when he came back he was... mean and difficult to please."

"Abusive?"

"I think he was a bit of a bully. Always telling John he wasn't- you know, wasn't manly enough or clever enough to amount to much."

"Of course," Sherlock muttered to himself, covering his nose and mouth with his hands thoughtfully for a second or two. "Of course. Army doctor. Clear overcompensation..."

"When John's mother was... was dying of cancer... his father started drinking. John postponed his final year at school so he could stay at home and look after her - after both of them, really. His father said something very cruel about it one day. After his mother died, John moved out and took Harry with him." She paused. "That's it. I don't really know anything else. He doesn't like to talk about it."

"So it seems."

Molly stifled a yawn in her hand and stretched out her legs. "I'm sorry," she said sheepishly, in quite different tones. "I don't think I can keep my eyes open much longer, Sherlock." Then, after a pause, "but if you want to stay here and watch telly or something, you're welcome to..."

Even Sherlock, spectacularly ignorant of social interactions though he was, could recognise "go away and let me go to bed in peace" when he heard it. He rose. "I have work to do tonight at the flat," he said. "You'll meet me in the lab again tomorrow, of course."

"Bit later tomorrow, please." She stifled another yawn. "Ten?"

Sherlock, who would never have left the lab at five p.m. under his own steam and who would have preferred to start at seven the next morning, huffed slightly. "Fine," he said. "Ten."

"Goodnight, Sherlock."

"Goodnight."


	11. Love and Power

"Wake up... hey, miss, wake up. You're here."

Molly stirred slightly, then half-opened her eyes and realised where she was- sitting in the back of a cab. It was the early hours of the morning- still dark- and she'd managed to fall asleep on the way home from the Queen Charlotte and Chelsea Hospital. The cab driver had come around to her side of the cab and opened the door for her, then given her a brief shake to rouse her.

"Oh." She stifled a yawn into her hand. "Sorry- I'm sorry. How much do I owe you?"

She handed over the requested amount blearily and struggled out of the cab with her overnight bag slung awkwardly over one shoulder.

"Everything okay?" he asked her, frowning in some concern.

"Yes- yes, I'm fine... Do you know what time it is?" she asked meekly as he got back into his seat.

"Just gone ten past five," he told her, glancing at his watch.

"Thank you."

He stayed on the kerb even after she shut the door, evidently watching to make sure she made it into the house. She fished her keys out of her handbag and went to the front door, being rapturously greeted by both hungry cats the second she was in hall.

Well, that whole thing had just been embarrassing. She was absolutely _sure_ that she'd been having contractions this time- real ones, not those 'false' ones she'd been having on and off for weeks. She was sure enough that she'd gone to the hospital and waited an hour, before being unceremoniously informed that she _wasn't_ in labour, and sent home with orders to call in before she panicked and came in for another false alarm.

 _Well, thank goodness I didn't call John over it,_ she thought, cringing. That could have been a disaster of epic proportions, especially when you factored in Harry. As embarrassing as the hospital- and the condescending, are-you-stupid lecture she'd been given by one of the midwives on duty - had been, it was surely a whole lot less embarrassing than calling John home, only to have to tell him when he arrived that she'd made a mistake after all.

She fed the cats, even though it was still a good two or three hours earlier than their usual breakfast, and went upstairs and back to bed, for what that was worth. She doubted she could sleep. For someone who was apparently not in labour, she was certainly very uncomfortable, and lay awake for some time trying to find a spot on the mattress where she could at least doze.

_Maybe I should call John, just let him know... not ask him to come home... oh, I can't! His father is being buried in eight hours. He doesn't need an excuse to run away from that. Or from Harry._

* * *

"This might be a little upsetting, Dr. Watson."

The time was half-past ten, and John and Harry had just arrived at the funeral home. Time for this viewing business, which John was looking forward to approximately as much as he looked forward to root canal therapy. He was standing near the doorway of the room, casting nervous glances at the glossy rosewood coffin at the far end.

Harry wouldn't come in with him.

She was blubbering outside already, in a way that was getting on John's nerves. After all, neither of them had spoken to the old man in all this time, so it was a bit hypocritical of Harry to start acting like she was grieving now. He brushed aside the obvious - her tears weren't grief. They were fear.

They'd talk about that on the way home. And for a good deal longer, John imagined. Now wasn't the time. Now he had to go over and take a look at his father's two-day-dead corpse.

The funeral attendant, a chubby, rosy young woman named Anna, was standing beside him in case she was needed; it was she who had warned him about it being upsetting. He glanced at her. "I've seen corpses before," he said briefly. "Plenty."

"You haven't seen this one," she pointed out in hushed, gentle tones. "It can be very different when it's someone you know and love. Take all the time you need. And if you don't feel you can do it- there's no shame in that, either."

John dithered. "Give me a minute, please."

"Yes," she said. "Of course."

"My sister's outside... she's a little upset. She might need some water to calm her down."

"I'll see to it."

"Thank you."

Anna closed the door softly behind her; John could hear muffled voices as she was asking Harry if she wanted a glass of water, or perhaps a cup of tea. He half-expected Harry to ask for a fifth of vodka- Lord knew that was what she really wanted. He tuned out Harry's whimpering and made himself walk over to the velvet-lined rosewood coffin at the window.

The initial shock was like being immersed in cold water- one gasp, and then he went about getting used to it. After all, it was just a corpse. _Death is not disgusting. It isn't frightening. It's natural. Everyone dies._

Dad had been much younger the last time they'd spoken, of course; John reflected that he'd only have been a few years older than he and Harry were now. And now he was dead- at only sixty-eight years old. Too young for a natural death, but then this one had been distinctly unnatural.

Acute pancreatic bleeding occasioned by chronic alcoholism.

John, with his doctor's knowledge, hadn't told Harry - would never tell her - that the end had probably been frightening and painful.

There was no fear or pain on the dead man's face now. Death had touched it and purified it; he looked... at peace. At peace, for possibly the first time in twenty-five years. Ultimate peace, but it had been gained at the ultimate cost.

John glanced down from the pinched, aquiline face and to where his father's stiff grey hands were crossed. Gold wedding ring on - a ring he'd never worn in life, even when Mum had been alive. He'd never liked jewelry. The solicitor had asked John if he wanted his father buried in a replica wedding ring, so that he could keep the original. Harry had kept Mum's wedding ring when she'd died.

_Let him be buried with it. I have my own, and don't need his._

"So," John murmured, looking back up at the still, soapy face, partially obscured with an iron-grey beard that had been recently groomed and washed. After death. "So. You're actually dead, then..."

* * *

"I'm so sorry, Sherlock," Molly exclaimed as soon as she saw the disgruntled consulting detective. The third-floor pathology lab was locked, and the keys were in her hand; he'd been forced to wait outside in the corridor for her. He glanced at his watch, unimpressed.

"Ten forty-two," he commented dourly.

"I know. I'm so sorry. I- I overslept..."

As she unlocked the lab and opened the door, she felt Sherlock's keen eyes on her, though she didn't return his gaze. Uncomfortably, she wondered if he was reading what had happened in the early hours, and how much of it he could grasp from just looking at her. Could he tell that she'd overslept because real sleep had only hit her after eight, and she'd been restlessly half-waking every few minutes with those infuriating false contractions since then?

He said nothing about it, at least. Despite huffing about the delay, he was more approachable than he'd been the day before, even making her a cup of tea- unasked- as she scrubbed up and found her lab coat and gloves.

"Need to speed it up today," he said briefly, handing her the tea.

"Yes." She sipped. "Sherlock, I had a thought about this last night. What if it _isn't_ poison?"

He blinked. "What do you mean?"

"Well..." she faltered, as she usually did under Sherlock's gaze. "I.. I mean, we looked for poison all day yesterday and couldn't find any, and the Street pathologist couldn't find any either. So I was thinking, maybe it's not a poison?"

"Well what is it, then?"

"Don't know," she meekly backtracked. There was no point in telling Sherlock the exact circumstances of her idea... sitting in Labour and Delivery at half past three that morning and overhearing a nurse asking someone if she was allergic to anything. "Perhaps it was an allergy? I mean, something that may not be really a poison, but was poisonous to _him_."

Sherlock paused.

"The pasty," he blurted out. "It was the only thing he'd eaten recently. If there was something in it, some additive or ingredient that he was allergic to..."

"The report says he'd recently been ill with mono," she said. "And he had an enlarged spleen. If he was really that ill, it's possible that the slightest thing could have set him off... I once did an autopsy on someone who died of heart failure after eating food that was too spicy for him."

"Molly Watson, for someone who's generally not worth listening to, sometimes you are a _genius,"_ Sherlock exclaimed, rushing over to the cupboard for a clean beaker and quite missing the wince on Molly's face as another contraction washed over her like a wave.

Ouch. That one _hurt._

* * *

John and Harry arrived at the church nearly an hour early. John, being the one who was ostensibly in charge of this circus, wanted to oversee everything that was going on.

"Hold up, Harry," he muttered to her as they came in the central nave door and waited to greet the minister. "Don't start crying before the service even starts..." he looked around for the holy water font out of habit, remembering after one confused second that he was in a Church of England church. Dad had never completely converted to Catholicism, and John was sort of glad of it. The last thing he wanted was to have to sit through a formal Requiem Mass like... the one Mum had had twenty-four years before.

"I'm _not_ going to start crying. Not yet, anyway. But people should cry at funerals..." Harry spoke vaguely. John followed her gaze to the back of the church, where a well-dressed woman, with dark hair luxuriously cut into a sleek bob, was hesitantly standing near the door. He recognised her with a pang.

 _Clara_.

Harry glanced at John.

"Don't look at me like that," he muttered to her. " _I_ certainly didn't tell her this was happening. Couldn't have contacted her if I'd tried. Do you want me to tell her to go-?"

Harry swallowed, then shook her head. "No," she murmured. "No, it's okay. I- think I should go talk to her."

"Outside, if you could."

John watched her go out to Clara with serious misgivings. The last thing Harry needed just then was- well, the _last_ thing Harry needed just then was a drink. The second-last thing she needed was Clara.

* * *

"How did you know?"

Harry had stepped out to where Clara had sat down on low stone wall outside. She was sucking on a cigarette, heavily-lipsticked mouth curled around it almost desperately.

_Still smoking. Still wears that blood-coloured lipstick._

Clara Watson, née West, had changed surprisingly little over the last five years. There were slight creases around her eyes and mouth- she was now thirty-eight- and a sort of tired resolution about her that Harry couldn't remember seeing before.

"I heard," she said briefly.

Harry decided not to question how Clara had heard. She wasn't local; she lived – or had when Harry had last seen her - in Lambeth.

"I'm sorry, Harry." Clara ashed her cigarette.

"Don't be," Harry said, lifting her chin. "John and I aren't exactly sorry. You know we haven't spoken to him in years."

"All the same, I'll say I'm sorry, because I am." Clara lifted her heavy lashes and looked at her ex-wife in silence for a few seconds- silence that was heavy with a sort of wistful affection. "How have you been, Harry?"

Harry kicked at the concrete she was standing on. "Oh, you know me. Still a tacky lush. You?"

"Still a neurotic bitch."

They smiled at each other, a little shamefacedly. Clara ashed her cigarette again - Harry had never seen her smoke so fast in her life.

"Do you want me to leave?" she asked next.

"No."

"Does _John_ want me to leave?"

"Probably."

Clara smiled wryly. "I'd expect nothing else from him. How is the poor, dear man?"

"He's well," Harry found herself saying. "Very well. You needn't worry about him staring at your boobs during the service-" Clara laughed- "he's reformed."

Clara looked doubtful.

"Well, he's got eyes. He's also got a wife who's the sweetest thing, and a kid on the way. But then, we both knew he was the one who was going to make something of himself one day. It certainly was never going to be _me_." She paused, glancing up to the horizon for a few seconds. "Anyway, I don't care what he wants. Stay if you want to."

Clara glanced toward the open church door. Organ music had begun to trickle out on the warm afternoon breeze. "Thank you,' she said. "I think I will."

"I appreciate that."

* * *

After a brief lunch that neither of them really ate, it started to occur to Sherlock that Molly was not looking very well.

She never complained. Of _course_ she didn't. Sherlock had more than once thought it entirely likely that Molly wouldn't make any noticeable protest if she was being stripped limb from limb. But she was pale and became even more quiet than usual, and she winced noticeably every now and again.

The difficult thing, Sherlock reflected to himself in rising nervousness, was deciding whether to say something. Because Molly certainly wasn't saying anything, and that was... awkward. The idea of bringing up the subject of the state of Molly's reproductive organs filled Sherlock with a kind of fluttery aversion that he'd never felt before and that he didn't understand.

He said nothing. Instead, he worked alongside her in silence for a time, covertly watching. Certainly, the quality of consistency of her work wasn't being affected; she hadn't looked up from it in half an hour when she suddenly broke the silence.

"Sulphur Dioxide."

This snapped him back to the case at hand. "Definitely?"

"Almost definitely." There was a quiet little triumph in her voice; that of a correct guesser. "It's... sometimes used as a preservative in pastry, you know."

"The government surely regulates it."

"Yes, but not everyone cares what the government thinks... and it's here in the sample in quite concentrated levels... levels above what I'd imagine is normal for edible pastry."

"Dangerous levels?" His eyes narrowed. But she shook her head.

"I don't think so." She was biting her lip. "Not for a healthy person... but if he'd... recently been ill... he..."

She trailed off, putting her beaker down and reaching out to grab hold of the counter. Taking a sharp breath, she shut her eyes for a few seconds.

"Molly-"

"I'm fine," she said quickly, sucking in another sharp, deep breath.

"You're _fine?"_ Sherlock's voice hit an upper register of alarm. His eyes flickered over Molly in one hurried scan, and he leaned over to put two fingers against her wrist. _"_ Pallor. Sweat. Dilated pupils. Elevated pulse rate. Shaking hands. Inability to stand unassisted, talk or maintain eye contact with me during the peak of the pain. Shall I go on, or should I just skip that part and call an ambulance?"

"Don't need an ambulance," she got out stubbornly.

Sherlock went to his coat, draped on a hook near the door; through the thudding of blood in her ears, Molly could hear the bleeps of his phone buttons being dialled. "Which hospital?" he asked.

"No," she protested weakly. " _No_..."

"I'm calling a taxi," he said phone to his ear. "Be grateful it isn't an ambulance - yes, I need to order a cab, please, to take us from Barts to... Molly, _which hospital?"_

"Queen Charlotte and Chelsea..." Molly gripped the bench, white-fingered, as Sherlock paced around with the phone. Concentration wavering, she heard him use the word "emergency"; but before she could protest, he'd hung up the phone. He practically threw it onto the bench, where it clattered to rest near her left hand.

"Fifteen minutes," he said tensely. "I don't suppose you've bothered to let John know the happy news?"

"He's at a funeral, Sherlock." She glanced at the clock. "One that started eight minutes ago. Even if he's got his phone on... he won't..."

She looked nervously across at him. Sherlock said nothing, but the look on his face as the situation unfurled was eloquent enough to express a single word.

_Shit._

* * *

John had more or less agreed to every hymn that the minister, a man he didn't know named Andrew Grose, had suggested to him. What did it matter? Dad didn't care, he was dead. _Abide with Me._ _Eternal Father, Strong to Save._

Eulogy.

Clutching some folded papers, John went up to the lectern when invited to; he shuffled them nervously in some semblance of order and cleared his throat, looking out at those who had come to see his father buried.

There weren't many. Old school friends. Old girlfriends. Acquaintances. Old neighbours. Veronica Cartwright, at least, hadn't darkened the door.

"I, um." John twitched the microphone. "I'm sure most of you know me- or remember me. I, uh, I want to apologise in advance for this eulogy, I... didn't have a lot of time to prepare for it, and those of you who know me will also know how badly I do at things like this..."

He trailed off. His gaze had suddenly come to rest on a spot in the far left corner, near the end of the row. Greg Lestrade was sitting there, in what he'd once referred to as his monkey-suit; the one reserved for funerals and weddings and theatre. Melissa was beside him, hands folded decorously.

He'd had no idea Lestrade even knew his father was dead. How had he...

For the rest of his life, John assumed that Molly had asked Lestrade to go to the funeral. No one ever mentioned the phone call Sherlock had made to the Lestrade household the night before.

Melissa was wearing a black dress and a fascinator. _She's wearing a bloody fascinator. Is she doing this to me on purpose?_ John stifled a nervous giggle into his hand, turning it into a cough. He glanced back at Lestrade, who nodded slightly in encouragement.

"Okay," he said finally, not game to glance over to where he just knew Harry had started to sniffle. "So I'd like to thank you all for coming... and give apologies for my wife, Molly, who's not able to be here with us today but who's been such a help to my sister and me during this... difficult time. So." He took a deep breath. "What can I tell you about my father? I can tell you the facts. I can tell you that he was born in Chelmsford on May 13th, 1945. I can tell you he married Charlotte Grace Hennessy on September 9th, 1971, and that my sister Harriet and I were born one year and twelve days later... I can tell you he was a Lieutenant Commander in the Royal Navy and served in the Falklands.

I can tell you what I can remember of him when I was younger. I can tell you all about when he was stationed at Devonport and we lived in Plymouth for four years... I can tell you lots of things... that people probably shouldn't say at funerals... and you all know it."

Dead silence, broken by a sniffle from Harry. John looked across and met Lestrade's gaze again.

"But I think I'm going to tell you all something different, actually. I wasn't aware of it before yesterday," he said, "but it turns out that my father kept diaries covering over twenty years. I had the privilege of being able to read some of them last night..." He faltered for a few seconds. "And, um. There was one entry in particular... I thought that it might help to let my father speak for himself.

"When we were kids, Harry and I had a dog named Penny." He glanced down at Harry, who was smiling through tears at the memory. "She was older than us, and we sort of... took it for granted that she was always going to be there. I suppose kids do that. When we were about eleven or twelve- and she must have been an old dog by then - Dad had her taken to be put to sleep."

He faltered. The room was still silent. Clearing his throat, he continued.

"I remember him announcing it to us one morning at breakfast - he said we had ten minutes to say goodbye to Penny before he was taking her to the vet. I don't mind telling you that I cried. I'm sure Harry doesn't mind me telling you that _she_ cried. She... didn't want to let Penny go. Dad had to... make her."

Harry stifled a sob in her hand.

"And all this time afterwards, I remember Dad being so cold about it... I think he literally said, 'Penny's just a dog. Dogs die all the time'. I thought... perhaps that was a good show of who he really was. But then last night, I found this in his diary..." John unfolded the piece of paper, a little clumsily. "And I, uh, I wanted to share what he wrote about it...

 _March 10_ _th_ _, 198__

_Talked with Lottie last night about Penny again. We decided it would be cruel to let her carry on when she can't even get up or sit down without pain, poor old thing. Bit cut up. I've had her since before we were married. Didn't tell the kids until the last minute. No sense in drawing things out. John was trying to be brave about it but he's just a kid, and he loved that dog. Harry lost it. Had to pull Penny out of her hands. She hit me and told me she hated me. Couldn't wallop her for that. She didn't understand._

_Took Penny to the vet and stayed with her on my lap for the needle. Seen men die before but never a dog. They asked me if I wanted to take her home but couldn't do that to the kids. Drove home and had to pull over four times. Couldn't see the road for the tears in my eyes. Wish I'd brought her home now._

"Um." John cleared his throat twice. "That's... yep. That's it."

There was no sound but a cough from the back of the room and the squeak of the lectern as John left it. He was dry-eyed and seemed vindicated; Harry stood up for a second and took his hands in hers as he got back to the pew. The minister, clearly not expecting the extreme brevity of John's eulogy, looked hesitant for a few moments, then ordered the next hymn.

* * *

"I'll give you fifty pounds in cash if you can get to the Charlotte inside of fifteen minutes," Sherlock told the taxi driver as he slid into his side of the cab and slammed the door.

"Sherlock," Molly protested.

"You're right, that's insufficient. One hundred."

"Sherlock, please..." Molly leaned slightly forward, addressing the driver. "There's no emergency," she told him calmly. "It's okay. Just drive normally."

"'You sure?"

"Yes. Please."

All the same, the cab took off at quite an alarming pace, reaching the corner in seconds. Sherlock, sitting opposite Molly, hit speed-dial on his phone and held it to his ear for several seconds, then growled in helpless fury and threw the phone into his lap.

"Voicemail?" she offered meekly.

"Yes," he snapped. "Just how long does a funeral go for, anyhow?"

"I don't know," she said. "Um, maybe an hour? What time is it now?"

"Just gone half past."

"It won't be long, then, Sherlock."

"'Long' is a relative term."

For the next few minutes, Sherlock was silent; he picked up his phone again and appeared to be texting at lightning speed. Molly looked steadily out the window, not speaking either; the pain started to rise again and she stiffened, bunching hands into white-knuckled fists. No. She _could_ handle this. She really could...

... Maybe not. The pain rapidly broke its previous barrier, and she felt the hairs on the back of her neck prickle up in protest.

It was then that Sherlock leaned across the space between them and caught her hand in his, giving it a warm squeeze. It almost shocked her out of the pain she was in. "Molly," he said awkwardly. "Um. If... if John doesn't... arrive in time..."

"He will," she got out as the pain started to fall again and the blood rushed from her head.

"Yes," he agreed uncomfortably. "But if he doesn't... do you, er... want me to...?"

She nodded, taking a deep breath. "Thank you."


	12. Closer

The service 'came out'; John neatly sidestepped the throng of well-wishers and comforters on the church steps. The last thing he needed or wanted was a hug and some insincerities from someone he hadn't seen in years, and who didn't particularly care that his father was dead. "Going for a wander, Harry," he muttered to her. "I won't be long."

"Are you okay?"

"Fine. Won't be long."

Without waiting for Harry's response, John wandered off the path and through the little iron gate into the cemetery to the north of the church building. Dad was not to be buried here; his last resting place would be at Witham, beside his wife.

Standing among the graves, John had a brief moment of wondering where his own last monument and testament would be. He had an idea that his paternal grandparents were buried in Chelmsford somewhere; his maternal grandparents he had never asked about. The Hoopers buried in Stepney. Of the Grahams, Molly's maternal side, he knew almost nothing. Bernadette Graham-Hooper had left her husband when her only daughter was three, and Molly didn't remember her or know where she was... if she was still anywhere on earth. Baby Watson wasn't going to have any grandparents.

_Well, you're full of cheerful thoughts this afternoon, John. No wonder you're always such fun to be around-_

"That was a magnificent eulogy you gave."

John looked up, a little taken aback. Clara was standing a few feet away, her fingertips resting on the last monument of Rita Farnham, beloved wife and mother, aged sixty-two.

"I, um. Thanks," he muttered, looking away at a line of chestnut trees on the far end of the churchyard. Beyond, hazy, slate-coloured storm clouds were starting to roll in.

"Would you like me to go away?"

He shrugged, looking down at the dry grass at his feet. "You're here now," he remarked, hoping she'd take the hint and leave. But of course, she wouldn't. She was Clara. Clara _never_ took the hint and left. Clara took the hint, flung it down at her feet and stomped on it.

There was a brief and awkward silence. John paused to read, or pretend to read, the epitaph of one Joseph Higham, killed at Dunkirk. Aged 24.

"So, uh, Harry was telling me you got married?" Clara glanced back over her shoulder at Harry, who was still on the church steps enduring a bombardment of hugs from people who were strangers to her.

"Yes. Last October." John twisted his wedding ring, mentally reminding himself to turn his phone back on once Clara was out of his business.

"And a baby soon?"

"Yes. Very soon."

She nodded, processing this information for a few seconds. She was clearly working out the maths behind a nine-month-old marriage and a baby due 'very soon.' "I'm pleased for you," she finally said. A little stiffly, perhaps, but John could tell that she meant it. "That's lovely news. You always wanted kids."

"Yeah, well..." He shrugged, feeling embarrassed about that and not knowing why. "I suppose most people do, eventually."

"But not me."

"I think that was the least of our problems, Clara."

"Mmm, agreed. The part where I fell in love with your sister did put a bit of an obvious dampener on our relationship, didn't it? But it was for the best. I _still_ don't want kids."

"Okay."

Clara paused again, running her hand over the worn sandstone monument. "Harry's not well, is she." It wasn't a question.

John rubbed his eyes for a second. "She still drinks."

"She's very thin."

"Yes, look, I'm bloody _working on it, Clara!"_

Clara startled; for a second she rested her weight on her hindmost foot. "Oh, John, you _idiot_ ," she murmured to him, shaking her head. "You're _still_ doing this? Idiot. Nine years. I told you nonstop for _nine years_ that you're not Harry's keeper. It's not your fault she drinks. It's never _been_ your fault she drinks. You can't get her well again. I couldn't do it, either. She needs rehab."

"We can't afford to send her to the kind of residential rehab she needs," he told her bitterly. "Do you have any idea how expensive it is?"

"Yes. I looked into it shortly before Harry... left. I couldn't afford it either, and you were in Afghanistan at the time. But now we could probably afford it together, John. Half and half."

He shook his head. "No. You shouldn't have to pay to put the woman who _left you_ through rehab."

"So you'll let this go on, because you want to tell me what I can and can't do with my own money? You've always been proud and stubborn, but don't you _dare_ put Harry at risk because of it," she seethed. "The whole town knows how your father died-"

"Go away, Clara. It's none of your business anymore."

She folded her arms. "See, that's where you're wrong, John. I'll always love Harry, and her welfare will _always_ be my business."

"As demonstrated by how often you've been around for the last five years, I suppose. I said go away." He turned his back on her, puzzling out the tombstone of one Sarah Jeffries, relict of the late Thomas Jeffries, aged 47. Beloved wife and mother.

_Really should call Molly. See how she's getting on._

* * *

The cab pulled up at the rank, and Sherlock got out of his side and hurried around to Molly's. There was a low exchange of voices; although she had her head down, Molly had an idea that Sherlock was paying the driver. He opened her own door for her, picking up her handbag and slinging it over his own shoulder with no self-consciousness. Then he took her hand in his and got her to her unsteady feet. Almost immediately her knees buckled, and she gasped and reached out to steady herself on his arm.

"Molly...?"

"I'm sorry," she got out. "I'm sorry, it really hurts..."

"Can you walk? Hold onto my arm. I'll help you."

"No, I can't, I can't..."

"Molly, we're a few feet away from the hospital entrance, and everyone who happens to walk by can see you," he told her through grit teeth. "If you want any kind of privacy for the upcoming ordeal you're _going to have to walk."_

She had her eyes shut as the worst of the pain rolled over her in a wave; only faintly did she have an idea that he was at her side, with no idea what to do about it.

"I'll carry you," was what she heard next.

"No-no-no!" she protested, pushing away his arms. "No..."

"You can't just stand out here all afternoon! You walk or I carry you, is that clear?"

She took a few seconds to get her scattered wits in order; then she reached out blindly with her right hand. It met his arm again; this time she leaned heavily on it. "I'm going to fall-"

"No, you're not. I've got you. It is physically impossible for you to fall more than about three inches. Start walking."

She took a few hesitant steps forward, leaning so heavily on Sherlock's arm that he practically _was_ carrying her. Then she heard a stranger from a few feet away: "hey, mate, do you need a hand with the missus?"

"She's not my wife," was the slightly disgusted response. "And we're fine."

* * *

"Don't crowd him, Mel, he'll come over when he's ready."

Lestrade and Melissa were standing near the gate in the churchyard, watching Harry deal with well-wishers and the idly curious from the church steps.

"You know he won't. Well, not... like that. Who's that he's with?" Melissa asked, shading her hand with her eyes and gesturing to Clara, who was still standing a few feet away from where John rather obviously had his back to her.

Lestrade glanced over. "Never seen her before, but I'll take a punt that that's the ex."

"Harry's or John's?"

"Both, but Harry's the one who married her." Lestrade pulled a packet of cigarettes out of his pocket. "Oh, this is all going back fifteen years ago. Anyway. Back in a tick."

" _Greg_."

"Oh, get off my back. I haven't had one all day."

He wandered down to the side of the road, well out of the way of the mourners, before lighting up. Now that the service was over he lost no time in putting his mobile phone back in working order- after all, Donovan and Dyer were still in Somerton on the case, and hopefully not getting themselves killed. Barely ten seconds after he'd turned the phone back on, it rang. He glanced at the caller ID and flicked it on. "Donovan," he said calmly. "News?"

"Nicholas Jestyn told Dyer he can remember his parents having a hell of a row the night our guy died," she rattled off without preliminary. "He says he doesn't know what it was about. A lot of swearing and something about things going balls-up, but he told Dyer he couldn't- hang on, sir, I'll put him on."

There was brief muffled noise and low voices; abruptly, Dyer's voice came through clearly. "Sir?"

"Okay, you're the man of the hour. Get the kid to talk, did you?'

"Got a brother who's twelve, sir. You know what they're like at that age."

"Yeah, boys are horrible people from the age of about five to eighteen. What did he tell you?"

"Sergeant Donovan got at most of it, sir. He said that after the row was over there were a few suspicious thumping noises, then both his parents left in the car and were gone for nearly an hour. Said he doesn't know where- he was half-asleep when they came back, and as far as he knows both of them went to bed after that. They were talking quietly on their way to their bedroom. He couldn't hear what about."

"And he never saw them leave in the first place, I suppose."

"No, sir. His bedroom's at the back of the property, and their bedroom's at the front."

"Typical." Lestrade sighed and sucked on his cigarette. Well worth, he thought, Melissa giving him disgusted comments about refusing to "kiss an ashtray" for the next two hours. "Listen," he said. "I'm still at this funeral, so I don't know how much I can do about this today. But I want you to have a word with Inspector Cain, see if he can make sure the Jestyns don't do any more running off to Glastonbury, or anywhere else, while we try to work things out. It's great news, but I'm not sure it's enough for an arrest yet. You're going to need to give me overnight to work on it."

"So we'll stay here again tonight, sir?"

"If you could." Lestrade generally made orders sound like suggestions. "Make sure you order a ton of room service, really stick it to the Met. I've got another call coming in, Jake, I'll talk to you later, okay?"

He pulled the phone away from his ear, looking at the incoming number and swearing mildly to himself when he realised he'd just addressed Dyer by his first name... fine for when he came over to the house for Hayley, not very professional during a work-related phone call. The newest caller was Sherlock. This was sure to be... interesting. With a sigh, he opened the line.

"Yeah?" It had been too long a morning for Lestrade to have much patience toward Sherlock just then. Tact and courtesy were generally wasted on him, anyway.

"Where are you?" Sherlock demanded immediately, sounding even more pleasant than usual.

"At the funeral, where you told me to be." Lestrade rolled his eyes.

"Is John there?"

"He's in my line of sight." Lestrade watched as John walked away from Clara and was apparently on his way over to greet Melissa.

"Well, tell him to _answer his bloody phone!"_

Lestrade stopped short for a few seconds. From only eight words, he could tell that this wasn't just Sherlock's usual petulance over John not catering to his every whim immediately. This was two degrees away from sheer panic.

"Sherlock," he said calmly, "is everything okay with Molly?"

He heard Sherlock take a deep breath. "That entirely depends on what you mean," he finally said. "We're at the Queen Charlotte and Chelsea. She's been assured that this is... progressing normally..."

" _Shit_."

"I couldn't have expressed it better myself."

"Hang on, I'm going to put John on." Lestrade started making his way back up the bank to the churchyard. "I swear though, Sherlock, he's already having a hell of a day so if you're exaggerating-"

Lestrade had found himself speaking to absolute silence. He pulled the phone away from his ear and checked the signal.

No bars.

He went over to where John was standing beside Melissa, near the cemetery gate and slightly apart from the rest of the crowd of mourners.

"Didn't expect to see you here," John remarked in accusatory tones. "You should have rung ahead."

"Yeah, if I'd done that you'd have just told us not to come. John, just had a call from Sherlock. Seems someone's arriving a little ahead of schedule, he's got Molly at the hospital."

It took a couple of seconds for this to sink in. "Oh, _God_ ," John blurted out, just as Harry wandered over to see what the conference was all about. "Are you serious? Oh, God. _Shit._ Is everything okay?"

"Sherlock sounded pretty serious... probably not worth swearing on church grounds about, though," Lestrade told him calmly. "He told me everything's 'progressing well', whatever the hell that's supposed to mean. I don't think he'd lie about something like that, but I can't get him back on the line, signal's dropped out. Come on, get in the car, I'll take you back now."

John looked at Harry, who was holding her tongue for a change but whose eyes were all alight with interest and excitement. "We need to get our things from the house," he faltered, torn between what he felt were conflicting duties. "And the keys have to go back to the solicitors..."

Lestrade glanced across at Melissa, who pouted for all of about three seconds. "I'll stay back here with you, Harry," she said cheerfully. "Just let me get my bag out of the car, Greg. We'll follow behind by train and bring your bags back. We'll be in London by this evening."

John glanced between Lestrade and Harry, then back again. "Are you... sure you'll be okay...?"

Harry stamped her foot. "John, are you completely fucking crazy?" she demanded. "Get yourself back home _immediately_ , this is my niece or nephew we're talking about. I want photos. Video. Everything. _Go_." She gave him a shove toward the lane where the car was parked.

* * *

At first, in all the confusion of being admitted and examined, Molly didn't take much notice of what Sherlock was doing. It was only when she found herself ensconced in a private room- having connections both in the British Government and the health industry had its perks- that she realised Sherlock was no longer with her.

No staff around, either. She was quite on her own. She got up to have a look around, peeking out into the corridor and then going over to the window, looking out onto a wilted little courtyard and dull-coloured buildings beyond.

Not much of a view. But then, she reflected, the view from her hospital window was the least of her concerns just then.

_Oh, God, another one? Again?_

And lots of _help_ she had, too, she permitted herself to think snarkily as she leaned her palms on the windowsill and breathed through the contraction that followed. Mel was right. Men were _useless sometimes._

_That's a horrible thing to think!_

She grit her teeth and vowed it to herself- she wasn't going to be one of those women who screamed abuse at her husband, or anyone else, just because this hurt a little. Well, a lot. But it wasn't going to go on forever, and she'd survived so far... most women did, apparently...

She'd paced back to the bed and was just about to go out and see where Sherlock was when an efficient nurse bustled in, pushing a squeaking IV tower.

"How are you feeling, Mrs. Watson?" she asked cheerily.

"Oh," she exclaimed, alarmed. "Oh, no, no, I don't want any drugs..."

"It's all right, this is just a hydration unit, absolutely no real drugs involved." The nurse smiled and picked up the chart at the end of Molly's bed. "Just checking that you're the right person... yes, all in order, though looks like you'll really need the saline. Is it still hot out there?"

Molly nodded.

"Horrible weather. No wonder you're a little dehydrated. Are you afraid of needles or anything like that?"

This time she shook her head. "I'm a pathologist," she explained, holding out her left arm. "I'm right-handed, and my basilic vein is usually the easiest one to tap."

The nurse smiled. "You know your stuff," she said as she drew out alcohol wipes and started her ministrations. "Have you got anyone here with you, Mrs. Watson?"

"Yes." Molly barely winced as the needle punctured her skin. "My husband's at a funeral in Essex... we're still trying to get hold of him... but his- I mean, our friend is here with me. I... don't know where he's gone, actually. But I'm sure he's close by."

"Is there anyone else you'd like us to try to get a hold of? Your mother, or another friend, perhaps?" Molly shook her head again as the nurse taped the IV in place and then started fiddling with the buttons on the tower. "Buzz me if you need anything. I'm Jill, by the way."

"I'm Molly."

"You look very tired."

"I am." Molly didn't mention that she'd been in roughly the same place twelve hours before and sent home. "Would it be okay if I tried to sleep for a little bit?"

"Good idea. I'm sorry about all the noise, by the way." Down the corridor, a woman who sounded very young had been screaming almost non-stop since they had arrived.

"Is she okay?" Molly asked nervously.

"Oh, yes, she'll be fine. A lot closer than you are, probably, and some people are just... a bit more demonstrative than others. Lights out?"

She nodded. Jill pulled the curtain across so that the door was not longer visible from the bed, then flicked the light switch off and left.

Molly curled up on her side, shutting her eyes and at least taking in the benefits of what was a reasonably comfortable bed. The room she was in didn't exactly look like a typical hospital room; it had fancy lamps and patterned curtains. Ugly 'modern' art on the wall, and what looked like a comfortable sofa in one corner. There was even a small kitchenette with facilities for making tea and coffee. She was on the fringes of sleep when the pain started to rise again; gripping the bedclothes in one fist, she reached out with the other hand for the nurse's bell.

 _Where's Sherlock?_ And more importantly, _where's John_ and _where on earth are all the nurses-? Ow-ow-ow-ow-OW! OW...!_

She'd navigated through the worst of the contraction and was starting to recover herself a little when she heard a squeak of shoes and Jill came back in.

"Everything okay?"

"Sorry," she moaned, feeling like an idiot for calling her in the first place. She swiped her hand over her forehead and was surprised at how damp it felt. "That one was only a few minutes and hurt a lot, I- think I panicked a bit..."

"Panicking's not allowed in this hospital," Jill commented coolly. "And as you can no doubt hear, you're very much not the panicking one, anyway." Down the corridor, the woman who had been screaming before was still going with it; tried-and-trueisms like _Get this thing out of me_ and _I hate you, Damian!_

"I know, I'm sorry," Molly fumbled abjectly.

"I'm going to see if we can get the doctor in to have a look at you, Molly, is that going to be okay? I know you're tired and just want to be left alone, but if things are coming on faster than expected..."

One of the very last things Molly wanted was another physical exam, but she exhaled and nodded. A shadow fell across the doorway, and she looked up to see that Sherlock had returned. He had his phone in his hand and, on seeing Jill, retreated in sudden bashfulness.

"It's all right." Jill smiled at him. "You're the friend, aren't you? You can come in, she's decent and not screaming the ward down. I'll see if I can track down the Ob on duty, Molly. In the meantime, let me know if you want anything. Except if you want Mrs. Sullivan to be a little more quiet. Afraid I can't really help with that."

Sherlock had by then taken a few hesitant steps inside the room. At the word _Sullivan_ he halted. Jill, noticing nothing, bustled out again; it was a couple of seconds before Molly saw that Sherlock hadn't moved and was mouthing the word _Sullivan_ to himself.

"Sherlock?" she ventured hesitantly.

"Lestrade's aware of the situation," Sherlock told her, a little distractedly. "He's at the funeral, and no doubt he'll be bringing John as soon as possible. The signal dropped out, so I can't confirm that. Still." He cleared his throat. "How, um. How are you feeling?" he ventured awkwardly.

"I'm fine."

"Do you want me to go?"

She shook her head. There was really no point in trying to sleep when she knew entirely well that the doctor was on her way in. Sherlock idly pulled her patient chart from the basket at the end of the bed, reading it over with no shame. She considered protesting- those things were meant to be _confidential_ \- and then, realising the sort of details that were held there, waited for Sherlock to reach them, gauging his reaction.

Sherlock blinked, put the chart down again, then went over and sat down on the sofa, his long legs stretched out awkwardly, as if he wasn't quite sure where to put them. He fiddled with his watch for a few seconds.

"Sullivan," he muttered again. "Molly, have you ever heard of the Sullivan Act?"

* * *

Fifteen minutes out of Great Leighs, both John and Lestrade's phones suddenly sprang to life, spitting out text alert after text alert like slot machines that had just paid out. John looked distractedly at his phone screen. "Twenty-six," he muttered.

"What?"

"Sherlock's texted me twenty-six times in just over an hour. And tried to call me seventeen times... well. _That's_ an interesting way of asking that I come home..." He thumbed in the number and put the phone to his ear. Lestrade drove in silence, blatantly listening in. "Sherlock, what the hell's going on? Is everything okay?"

Sherlock was loudly responding at a rate of knots for the next half a minute.

"Okay, so... Sherlock, shut up and listen. You're just lucky I managed to talk her out of that home birth she wanted... no... You can't _make_ her take the pain medication. No, I can't _make_ her, either. Just let her sort it out for herself. But if she suddenly says she wants it, you make sure they give it to her without any messing about, okay? We'll be just over an hour, so just hold up a bit more and if you scare her, _so help me_... is she there with you now? Put her on... did you seriously just ask me _why?"_

Then came a ten minute flood of awkward phone ministrations to Molly- John was all too aware that the call wasn't private on either side. When he finally finished the I-love-you-toos and the I'll-be-there-soons and hung up, both men were silent for a few minutes.

"Do you know what the Sullivan Act is, Greg?"

The question was so utterly unexpected that it threw Lestrade for a few moments. "Haven't a clue," he finally said.

"Neither did I, to begin with, but Sherlock mentioned it just now and I vaguely remember reading it in the paper just after I came home from hospital. An Act of Parliament they passed last March. Any illegal immigrant or visa overstayer who's been here for longer than ten years, and who can pass a literacy and numeracy test and prove a clean criminal record, is being given an amnesty."

"Yakiv Kazan was about to get his freedom."

"Yes."

"And then someone conveniently murdered him."

"I'm sure it was a bit inconvenient for him."

Neither of them spoke for a few minutes more; Lestrade, glancing across at John, saw that he was looking out the window but was miles away in thought. He had the back of his left hand resting gently against the pane, curling his fingers every now and again.

"She'll be okay, John," Lestrade finally offered.

"I know," John snapped. "I _am_ a doctor."

"And this is Molly we're talking about. But she's in good hands. Not talking about Sherlock's." Lestrade smiled a little. "And before you ask 'cause I know you're dying to and have been for ages, no... it... won't be the same after. Think of this whole thing like- well, like your favourite pub burning down. It'll be closed for reconstruction for a few weeks... um. You'll always miss the old place, but the new one's going to be better, right, with- okay, I'll just shut up now."

"Yeah," John muttered, turning to the window again. "Yeah, I think you probably should."


	13. Arrival

"I could be wrong," Sherlock remarked, "but is straddling a chair conducive to... the physics of this... event?"

He had been sitting on the sofa for nearly an hour, phone in hand, alternatively texting various threats and pleas to John and researching the "physics of this event" on YouTube and various other sites. Sherlock hadn't had a spot in his Mind Palace labelled 'childbirth' several hours ago, but he certainly did now. It was a place he hoped fervently that he'd never have any need to explore again.

"Well, obviously not for the actual birth, but there's a while to go before that happens," Jill said, with just a hint of iciness in her voice. As a midwife, she respected Molly's choice of company; as a woman, she disliked Sherlock Holmes strongly, and was just thankful that he wasn't apparently the baby's father. "So," she went on, trying to lift Molly's spirits and take her mind off things for the time being. "You're a pathologist then, Molly? Which hospital?"

"Barts..."

"Ah, yes, I see. You'd have to be qualified up to the back teeth for work like that, I imagine? A lot of Uni?"

Molly nodded wearily. "Nine years."

"Wow. You've got a tonne more commitment than I have. Lots of brains, too, I'll bet."

"Just a suggestion," Sherlock broke in, pausing the rather explicit birth video he was watching on his phone. "When John arrives, try _not_ to tell him that the person responsible for the safe delivery of his first child has less than nine years of formal tertiary education."

"It... wasn't really that hard to get through..." Molly said to Jill, completely ignoring Sherlock's remark. Sherlock, listening in with grudging interest, knew she wasn't boasting; she was a genuine genius, IQ of well over 150, who had taken a place at university at the age of sixteen. "A lot of it was just remembering things... facts. You just had to keep them in order. Acronyms and mnemonics and things... ouch... Sherlock..."

She reached out to him, resting her forehead on the back of the chair and taking a deep breath; Sherlock rose with surprising willingness and went over to her, letting her grasp his hand.

"Doing well, Molly," Jill reassured her, hand on her back. "Very well. Keep breathing..."

"You know, that's really becoming quite repetitive," Sherlock said. "Not to mention the fact that it has little to no meaning at all. She doesn't need to be reminded to breathe, it's a perfectly normal physiological impulse. And she's doing very well at _what,_ exactly? To the best of my observations, she really isn't doing much at _all_ , yet."

Jill grit her teeth slightly. "She's doing very well handling the pain," was her testy response.

"And what, exactly, is the alternative?"

"Sherlock, please don't." Molly was still clinging to his hand; Sherlock subsided and waited things out in silence. It was only when her grip loosened that he turned to Jill again.

"Okay, out," he said.

_"I beg your pardon?"_

"You heard me perfectly. In the extremely inconvenient absence of her husband, Molly has evidently decided to function as a stimulant of genius and, though quite accidentally, has just said something truly clever. We need to discuss the details of a highly sensitive murder case. Unless Molly's in imminent danger of giving birth, I think we can spare your company for the time being."

"It's okay," Molly broke in before an argument could erupt between the two. "I'm sure there's somebody else... around... who might need some help too..." This did not, apparently, include Mrs. Sullivan; she'd been moved twenty minutes before, which had done wonders for Sherlock's nerves and, if she would ever admit it, for Molly's.

Jill looked understandably dubious; she glanced between Sherlock and Molly. "Are you absolutely sure?"

Molly nodded, and Jill reluctantly rose.

"I'll be back in to have a look at your progress in a few minutes, okay?"

Molly nodded again, and Sherlock fixed the woman with his withering gaze until, highly chagrined, she left, hanging a right at the doorway and probably making for the nurse's station. No sooner had she left than Sherlock started fumbling in the inside pocket of his jacket, bringing out his notebook and pen.

"You like poetry, don't you?" he asked. "Gauche, excessive, romantic nonsense. You liked the Rubaiyat, for example."

Molly looked up at him as if he'd suddenly lost his mind. She exhaled and shut her eyes. "Yes... well..."

"I'm not asking you out of idle curiosity. I think I know what this code is, and I need you to help me try out my theory." Sherlock had pulled a crumpled piece of paper out of his other pocket, where he'd scribbled a transcript of the Somerton Code. "Molly, I need you to concentrate so we can get as much of this done as thoroughly as possible before we're interrupted again. That infernal woman will be back before we have time to miss her, and John just texted that he and Lestrade went through the Brent Cross Interchange a few minutes ago. They'll be about fifteen minutes."

"Oh, Sherlock, I want to help you," she said in a little voice. "I really do. But I... I don't know how much help I can be... this really hurts, and it's... sort of... all I can concentrate on just now..."

"And helping me with this will take your mind off the pain more than any condescending requests to breathe ever would, I imagine. So make an effort. This will require your creativity."

"I'm not really very creative, Sherlock..."

"I'd say giving birth is pretty creative, wouldn't you?" He sat down on the bed beside her chair. "Now listen carefully, because you know I'm in no mind to explain the same thing to you more than once..."

* * *

"Are you supposed to stop in a loading zone?"

"I'm a copper, I can stop anywhere I like." Lestrade put on the handbrake as if to prove it. "Some nice perks with this job. What do you want me to do now?"

"Hopefully, it won't be 'arrest Sherlock for creating a public disturbance.'" John had paused on the kerb, holding the car door open, but he was anxiously shifting from one foot to the other. "Go off home, let me know how Harry and Mel are getting on. I'll text you when there's anything to text. Thank you."

"Don't worry about it. And seriously-"

"Yeah, yeah, I will."

"You haven't even-"

John shut the car door firmly- he would never in a million years own up to slamming it- and hurried through the main hospital entrance. Although the aroma of coffee permeated the front foyer from the gift shop and café just inside, he ignored the urge for caffeine; he didn't know how things were going with Molly, after all, and showing up to this event with a Styrofoam cup in hand might be considered a little... inappropriate. Instead, he made his way along a rather bewildering subset of corridors and through the double swinging doors to the reception desk of L&D, where two middle-aged women were sitting behind the desk chatting.

"I said to her," one, a large woman with a wealth of grey regrowth over brassy blonde, was telling the other. "I said, 'Janine, you know he's never going to amount to anything the way he's going.' But of course, she won't listen, and she's the one having the suffering of it. I throw my hands up about it sometimes. I mean, we all remember the pigeon incident, don't we. Not to mention the fact that he went and sold the car for spite-"

John cleared his throat. "Could you help me, please?" he spoke up.

The woman who had been listening turned to him as if he was a random distraction. "Can I help you?" she asked expressionlessly.

Evidently, she either hadn't heard his plea for help or hadn't really registered what he said. John took a deep breath. This was no time to get into snark battles with anyone. "Yeah, um," he faltered. "My name's John Watson, my wife's here...?"

"Her name?" She drew her office chair close to the computer and started clicking away with the mouse.

"Molly Watson. She might have signed in as Mary...?"

"Oh, she's the one who came in with the handsome bloke in the suit," was the response. She was still clicking away at the computer; she suddenly glanced up at him. "So you're the husband, then? You look sort of familiar."

"I used to work next door, you'll have probably seen me around." John decided not to suggest that she might have a vague recollection of him from media attention in years gone by. She shrugged the issue aside.

"Yeah, that makes sense. Well, she's here and she hasn't delivered yet, so you might have just avoided eighteen years in bad graces for _that._ I'll need you to sign in."

"Of course... yes... absolutely... sure... no problem..." John fumbled awkwardly in his wallet to produce his ID, then scrawled a rather shaky approximation of his signature on the register of visitors.

"Room 17," she said, barely glancing at his ID to make sure he was who he said he was and handing over a security lanyard. "Just around there to the left, before you get to the staff lounge and one short of the amenities room-"

John was no longer listening. He was, in fact, already halfway down the corridor as it snaked along to the left; the room numbers were signposted and hardly needed a tour guide to find. The door was discreetly closed; he knocked on it briefly and then threw it open without further permission. Molly, now standing at the foot of the bed in her bare feet and hospital gown, turned.

"John-!" she exclaimed, delighted.

"Oh, Molly. I'm so _sorry_..." He went to her, drawing her close as gently as possible. "I'm sorry I wasn't here. Are you okay?"

"I'm fine... I'm really fine, honestly... but I didn't think you'd make it..."

This was a moment for John and Molly; John later had no recollection of seeing Sherlock Holmes there at all. And neither he nor Molly noticed when Sherlock rose from the sofa where he'd been sitting and quietly left the room.

* * *

Outside, the storm clouds that had been banked up over the east of Essex hours before were now rapidly rolling on over the city. Sherlock walked across the street and stood there in the oppressive, gloomy afternoon, smoking a badly-wanted cigarette; he finally fumbled in his pocket and drew out the set of house keys he owned for the Watson place. John hadn't asked him to do anything there- too distracted, no doubt- but he stood in silence and thought for a few minutes, looping the keys idly off his fingers.

Couldn't hurt. John... might appreciate it.

* * *

On arriving at the house, Sherlock was bombarded with feline attention. Although Toby barely tolerated Sherlock whenever he visited and Casper generally acted like he didn't exist, both of them greeted him noisily as he let himself into the house, nearly tripping over something in the front hall. He looked down and saw that it was a small overnight bag sitting near the coat stand. Molly had taken it with her the night before, but neglected to bring it along when she'd come to the Barts lab.

The process of deduction on what the cats wanted from him was brief and easy. Cats wanted two things, generally: food and attention. Considering their general dislike for him, he felt he could safely eliminate the second possibility. Now remained only the process of working out where the cat food was kept.

_John would never keep pet food in the same place as food meant for human consumption._

_Laundry...?_

He found the cat food in the laundry cupboard and served up what he hoped was an appropriate serving size for each cat; then, absent-mindedly leaving things where he'd set them down on the floor, he wandered upstairs.

Although it had been a work-in-progress since John had come home from hospital in February, Sherlock had not yet seen the nursery. It had never occurred to him to care enough to go in and look. He found it an obscenely well-put-together little room, all mahogany furniture and gender-neutral cream-and-spring-green paint and accents; obviously Molly had won over that. John would never have suggested or implemented such frippery. Everything was brand new, from the change table to the rocking chair; all except one thing. In the canopied cradle, on bedclothes obsessively neat and level, was a tattered grey stuffed mouse with paisley print ears.

_Molly's childhood toy, clearly. If John ever owned such a thing, he'd never admit to it._

Ugh. And John wondered what all the attitude had been about for the last few months. The ex-soldier whose favourite activities had once included burglary, arson and executing Chinese gangsters was now thoroughly embedded in a world of padded rocking chairs and _paisley-eared mice!_

Shutting the nursery door behind him, Sherlock barrelled back down the stairs three at a time, nearly tripping over Casper again at the bottom. Pulling the keys back out of his pocket, he went to the hall and picked up the bag Molly had left there. He wasn't sure whether or not it contained whatever it was that she wanted or needed, but he was certainly _not_ going to go through it and check.

* * *

It was half-past six when Sherlock arrived back at the ward; the evening reception and nursing staff watched with some bemusement as the posh bloke in the suede suit and silk shirt sat cross-legged on the sofa of the waiting area, scribbling obsessively into a little red leather notebook he'd brought.

Sherlock, for his part, took no notice of the staff staring or whispering about what he was doing. The notebook and pen, the crumpled piece of paper laid out on the cushion beside him with a jumble of random letters on it; these were the only things in Sherlock's world for nearly four hours.

For most of the staff, this was not the weirdest thing they'd seen a man do in the waiting area of Labour and Delivery. Weird, but not threatening or creepy. When asked who he was waiting for, he was able to produce his security pass and ID and explain about his 'friend' in room seventeen. He made no attempt to go further down the hall or access the more secure parts of the ward.

They left him to it.

* * *

It was a quarter past ten, and Sherlock was still experimenting with different adjectives and switching them around to his purposes, when he suddenly heard a calm voice close by.

"Sherlock?"

He shook himself and looked up. John had come out to the waiting area and was looking at him with a combination of amusement and light concern.

"I thought you went home hours ago," he said, smiling.

"I did go home," Sherlock mumbled, flushing a little. He strongly disliked being sneaked up on; but he had to admit to himself that he'd let his guard down enough for John to do it this time. "Well, I went to _your_ home, anyhow. Fed the cats."

"... You fed the cats?" John sounded extremely doubtful. "Really?"

"Why would I lie about that?" Sherlock gestured to the bag on the floor with one foot. "Anyway. Brought that for Molly."

"... Thank you." John was still looking at him strangely, as if he was suddenly seeing a different person and not sure what to make of it. "Saves me a trip- or a phone call, anyway. But seriously, you didn't need to stay here so late, Sherlock. There was no emergency."

" _Was_ no emergency...? _"_

"Well, there isn't any emergency now, either. Hang on, I'll be right back."

John went back down the corridor; he was back five minutes later with what, at first glance, looked like nothing more than a wadded up white hospital blanket. Further investigation of that blanket revealed a tiny, wrinkled, damp newborn fast asleep inside it.

"Someone arrived just over an hour ago," John said, hushed and proud. "Go on, then, World's Only Consulting Detective. Deduce if you've got a niece or a nephew."

"Biologically, I have neither," Sherlock reminded him snippily.

"Oh, don't be so pedantic about it, Uncle Sherlock. Who cares about the biology of it?"

"I suspect your wife might care about 'the biology of it' just now. And if this child ever addresses me as 'Uncle Sherlock', you will _regret_ _it_."

"Waiting for that deduction, Sherlock."

Sherlock's eyes flickered rapidly back and forth, as they always did when he was making lightning-fast observations; but he barely glanced at the baby. His analysis of the mysterious gender was entirely of the expression and body language of the proud father.

"Girl," he said. "Obviously."

John was still smiling- no, John was _grinning_. "Lucky guess."

"It wasn't a guess," Sherlock protested, extremely miffed. "You know my methods. I don't guess. I _never_ guess. In this instance, I deduced from-"

"Oh, for once, I actually don't care how you deduced it. Here..."

"What?" Sherlock suddenly looked alarmed, holding up his arms in protest as John started to hand the newborn over. "John, no. _No..."_

"Yes, come on, don't be so miserable about it."

"No. I _don't_ _like_ babies. I've never held a baby in my life, and I don't intend to start now, just because you and Molly- John, I am _serious about this..._ "

But Sherlock didn't have much of a choice by this time. He very reluctantly took the baby in the scrunched-up blanket, looking at her in silence for a few seconds. For the most part, she was _absurdly_ like John, right down to the brow and ears, though her chin and the curve of her mouth were like Molly's already. The fine little tufts of down covering her head were probably going to grow out into locks of fair hair. Future eye colour uncertain- her eyes were closed- but she already had ridiculously long, light eyelashes fanned out over her damp cheeks.

She was an odd little Hooper-Watson... hybrid.

"There, look, she didn't even stir," John said contentedly.

Sherlock looked down at her again.

"Hello," he muttered awkwardly, clearing his throat. "Well, you're very... small. I think you're the smallest person I've ever met."

"Five pounds, thirteen ounces. Bit on the small side." John pulled a fold of blanket away from the baby's face with one finger. "On account of her being in a bit of a hurry to get here. And, I suppose, because she's a Watson." He looked at Sherlock's expression, then grinned. "It's okay," he said. "You don't have to lie through your teeth and tell me she's beautiful. She'll look a bit... odd... for a couple of days. If Molly asks, though, she's the most amazingly beautiful baby you have _ever_ seen and in no way has an odd-shaped head, got that?"

Sherlock's mouth twitched, though he made no reply. He was still looking the scrawny newcomer over. "Well, her gender solved your dilemma about the merits of the name _John_ ," he said in practical tones.

"Oh, but that's her middle name," John said with a straight face; then, seeing Sherlock's expression, he started laughing. "I'm _kidding_. She was always going to be Charlotte- Charlotte Mary Watson. But Molly's calling her _Charlie_ already."

"Ugh, how common of her."

"Well we can't call a little thing like her a name like _Charlotte_ from the start," John protested. "We'll save that for when she's older and being punished. My mother called me _Squirt_ until I was about seven." He paused. "Did you never have a nickname as a child?"

"No."

"Really? You know I'm going to ask Mycroft and find out if you're lying. No one _ever_ shortened 'Sherlock'?"

"No, they did not. And you needn't remedy that by thinking up some ridiculous nickname for me now, thank you."

The baby stirred slightly, pursing her distinctly too-small Hooper mouth; abruptly one of her tiny hands came loose of the blanket and flopped out. Sherlock looked at it for a few seconds in sudden fascination. Of course, even a baby that was two weeks early was 'finished', his research had told him to expect that much. But he hadn't really thought about the fine details of that little hand- the delicate, glossy nails and crinkled knuckles. He lifted them gently for a closer look; tiny fingers closed fast around his own finger.

He cleared his throat again. "So. How's Molly?" he asked awkwardly.

"She's fine, or will be," John said. "Very tired, but we got there all right in the end. Her doctor wants to keep them in for a couple of days at least- they want Charlie to really be thriving before she leaves, and Molly lost a little more blood than they think she should have."

Sherlock winced.

"But she'll be okay. She's fast asleep, or she was five minutes ago. No emergency, like I said." John paused. "Thank you, Sherlock."

"Hmm, what?" He looked up in genuine confusion.

"For getting Molly here and staying with her. It can't have been easy for you. Thank you."

Whether Sherlock was about to reply or not, he was suddenly distracted when the baby's dark eyes opened slightly. "Ugh, take it back," he demanded, anxiously starting to hand her over.

John calmly took the baby back, shifting her slightly in his arms with surprising knack. "Gender pronouns, Sherlock. She's not an 'it' anymore," he said. "Anyway, you don't have to stay. Visiting hours for the ward start at ten. You'll bring Mrs. Hudson tomorrow? You'd think Molly would just want to sleep for a week, but she wants to show this one off to everyone in London, apparently."

Sherlock knew enough by now to be able to tell when he was being dismissed. He stood up; John gave him a vague sort of nod by way of goodbye and had taken his daughter back to Molly's room before Sherlock had even reached the security doors to the outer corridor.

* * *

John slipped quietly back into the darkened room. Molly was tucked up in bed, peacefully asleep despite the active IV still sticking out of the crook of her arm. John laid the baby in her clear hospital bassinette and fumbled for a nearby chair. Molly stirred at the gentle sound, then opened her eyes in sudden alarm and sat up.

"Charlie-?"

"She's here, Lolly," John reassured her in gentle amusement. "She can't really go too far off her own steam yet. Right here, and still fast asleep. Quick, you'd better get in another ten minutes of sleep yourself before she demands to be fed again."

Molly lay back on her pillows, but didn't shut her eyes. She was still looking across at her baby daughter; she reached out to her with one hand and John edged the bassinette a little closer for her.

"We made a _person_ , John," she blurted out, grinning from ear to ear. "And I don't want to ever stop looking at her!"

"Yeah, she's one hell of a novelty, all right." John smiled as the baby curled her hand around his finger. "But as for making a person, you had the hard part. Still can't believe you did that."

"Me neither." Molly exhaled, smiling a little weakly.

"Are you okay?" John suddenly frowned. "Do you want me to call one of the nurses back in?"

"I'm fine... no, I'm _great_. No, the best I have ever been _in my whole life ever_ , John!"

"I'll bet. But you'll be even better if you get some sleep, Lolly." He leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. "Thank you. I love you."


	14. Resolution

At half past ten the following morning, Sherlock and an extremely impatient Mrs. Hudson arrived at the hospital to find it was already standing room only in Molly's room; Lestrade and Melissa had arrived. Tiny Charlie was more alert than Sherlock had seen her the night before. A lot more alert. She was red-faced and screaming in rage. John had her against his shoulder and was pacing near the window, trying to calm her down.

"Oh, of all the times for you two to walk in," he said calmly on seeing them. "Molly and Harry are down getting coffee. Do you want to have a go trying to find the 'off' button on this one, Sherlock? Something tells me you might be good at this."

"I doubt it." Sherlock folded his arms against any stealth attempts on John's part to hand the screeching bundle over to him. She'd been wearing nothing but a white singlet and a hospital blanket the night before, but today she was wearing a frilly eggshell-blue dress with rosebuds embroidered on the skirt. It was slightly too big for her, and the straps were slipping down her shoulders as she waved her little arms around angrily.

"Blame Harry for the dress," John remarked happily on seeing Sherlock's expression. "And if you think _that's_ nauseating, you should see the panda outfit. I hope she was kidding about maxing out a credit card this morning buying baby clothes... oh, come _on,_ Charlie," he muttered gently, patting her back. "Come on. What do you want?" Then, seeing Mrs Hudson's frown, he smiled a little foolishly. "It's all right. We asked the nurses. Apparently there's nothing wrong with her, she just likes to cry a lot."

"Greg," Melissa muttered over the din, "you'll be pleased to know that I'm pretty sure my ovaries just committed suicide in terror."

Sherlock frowned slightly. _That's interesting._

"Oh, she's probably just not used to so many people about," Mrs Hudson said indulgently. "Poor little thing..." she gently went to take Charlie out of her father's arms.

John hesitated. "Are you absolutely sure you want her right now?"

"Babies cry, John. It doesn't worry me... oh, look at her, she's just _lovely_."

"I think you've just signed yourself up for babysitting, Mrs. H," Harry remarked happily as she and Molly returned to the room, carrying Styrofoam cups. "Congratulations, and have lots of fun."

"Oh, no, I wouldn't have the faintest idea what to do with a baby, Harry," Mrs Hudson protested, although tiny Charlie had started to wind down the screaming in her arms. "I never had any of my own, and it's been a long time since my nieces and nephews were this small."

"Dammit," Harry muttered to herself, but she was now on a different tangent altogether and rifling through her handbag. "We did say _cake_ , didn't we, Molly? Fifteen different types of cake in that place, and I forgot to get any."

"Oh, that's okay, I don't need-"

"You need cake. I'll be back."

Before Molly could protest something along the lines that she didn't strictly _need_ cake, Harry had turned and left again. Sherlock glanced over at Molly, evaluating her overall health and wellbeing.

She was fine. She'd foregone the hospital gown of yesterday for a loose sundress; her hair was dishevelled but newly washed. She looked tired, but there was an inner radiance in her that wasn't abated in the least by the caterwauling of her firstborn. "Oh, I'm so sorry she's being difficult," she told Mrs Hudson awkwardly.

"Oh, dear, it's nothing, really. I was just telling John, I expect a baby to cry." Charlie had stopped the ear-splitting shrieks by this time, however, and was squawking in short, angry bursts, punctuated by hiccups.

Molly smiled a little shamefacedly. "Well, yes," she conceded. "But I was sort of hoping she'd be doing something _cute_ when you met her for the first time..."

Lestrade looked at Sherlock. "Coffee break?" he suggested, with just the slightest hint of desperation in his voice. "Come on, John, you too. Like Mrs. Hudson said. Lots of people about. We may as well make it three less for the time being."

John looked across at Molly, as if seeking her permission. "Well, I-"

"The coffee from the cafeteria is really quite nice," was Molly's sole comment. John, glancing over at Charlie for a second, got up.

* * *

"They don't really scream _that_ much, do they?" John wearily asked Lestrade as they approached the cafeteria door. "I mean, not all the time?"

Lestrade shrugged. "I can't really remember, to be honest." He looked rather shamed to admit it. "I worked a lot when the kids were little. Hayley was a good baby. Matthew screamed a lot, I think. But then, he's Matthew."

"Why would Melissa think you'd be pleased to hear of her revulsion at the idea of having children?" Sherlock asked bluntly.

"Sherlock," John muttered. " _Not_ good. You don't ask personal questions like that."

Sherlock looked across at him in honest confusion, but he subsided, instead of asking _why_ he shouldn't ask personal questions like that. Lestrade was looking up at the menu board and said nothing about Sherlock's question. They were in the cafeteria queue by this time; coffees in hand, they found a rickety table in the corner and sat down.

"I know you two would just _love_ to run through every obscene detail of yesterday, but we do have other things to be getting on with," Sherlock announced, pulling a piece of paper out of his pocket.

"What's that?" John asked.

"The Somerton Code," Sherlock responded. "Or rather, what we all imagined to be a code. It stands to reason, John, that if a code cannot be deciphered, it's _not_ a code. Molly, of all people and under less than ideal circumstances, gave me a new perspective. We established days ago that Kazan was writing this out of his own head, not transcribing what someone else was telling him. He was also _inventing_ it out of his own head. The only way to exactly decipher it is to ask him, and he's dead. But I'll tell you one thing. It's a memory device for a love poem."

"... A love poem...?" Lestrade sounded extremely doubtful.

"Renae Jestyn meets a man at university. They fall in love. He jumps his visa. They maintain a relationship for over, what, sixteen years? But they can't be open about it, because he's not meant to be in the country. Renae marries Daniel instead. And then, a few months ago, the Sullivan Act. Kazan was about to get his freedom- and he wanted Renae to leave that boor she's married to and start a new life with him. How was he going to convince her? Look at the _books_ the woman owns. She's a hopeless romantic. A poem, in English, written and recited by a man who was showing off how far his language skills had come along, is almost a foregone conclusion."

"Yeah, that's great, Sherlock." Lestrade stirred his coffee. "How can we prove it?"

Sherlock pursed his lips. "I don't know," he said, finally. "The best thing would be to elicit a confession from Renae, of course."

"Not likely," Lestrade scoffed.

"I know. She's been evasive from the start. I doubt she'd ever break under the sort of pressure we could legally give her, and she's not the type to slip up in a moment of panic- John, do pay attention for more than five seconds at a time."

"Sorry." John stifled a yawn. "I do have other things on my mind just now, you know. And that's beside the fact that I've been up all night. I really need sleep."

"Ugh, dull."

"I still don't get that, Sherlock. How can things like breathing, eating and sleeping, be _boring?"_

"Well, of course, they wouldn't be boring to an average mind like yours, but-"

"Okay, stop." Lestrade stood up, picking up his half-drunk coffee. "Suppose we should be headed back to do a bit more kid-worshiping. You're not serious about the panda outfit, are you?"

* * *

John had been completely serious. By the time they returned to Molly's room Harry had got out the aforementioned panda outfit, and a number of other outfits and costumes that her brother had already reminded her wouldn't fit her niece for at least three months. Charlie was mercifully asleep again, nestled up against Mrs Hudson's grandmotherly shoulder. Lestrade, appearing to make a significant effort not to look at Melissa, leaned over to stroke one of her chubby cheeks with his finger.

"You know, she really looks like you, John," he remarked. "Poor little sod."

"Oh, Inspector!" Mrs. Hudson scolded him. "That's a terrible thing to say- there's no 'poor' about it! She's beautiful. _All_ new babies are beautiful."

"Hayley wasn't," Lestrade protested, just to get Mrs. Hudson going. "She was born with a bright-red rash, and then scratched up her face with her fingernails before anyone could stop her. She _improved_ , but God, I was a bit embarrassed to admit which one was mine for the first couple of days. Not something you can do, John- not when she's got ears like that." He smiled. "Oh, well. At least we know Molly's honest."

Lestrade was perhaps the only person on earth that John would tolerate making jokes about his wife's honesty. There was a light round of laughter. It was a few moments more before John, sitting on the bed beside Molly with one arm around her, looked up at Sherlock. He was standing just inside the doorway, silent and still; he was clearly mentally very far away, his gaze just over Melissa's shoulder at nothing in particular.

"Sherlock...?" John ventured. "Are you okay...?"

"Oh, God," he muttered, hands at his lips. "Of course. That's it. Of _course!"_

Without further word, he turned on one heel and dashed out of the room and down the corridor. John looked across at Lestrade. "Greg-"

"On it."

"Make sure you actually come back at some point," Melissa called after him, but it was probably too late by then. She sighed. "Last week he left me standing in the middle of Union Street because... actually, I don't even _know_ why. I know it was expensive to get home..."

* * *

Sherlock was swift on his feet and had had a fair head start; he'd reached the front doors of the hospital before Lestrade caught him up, grabbing at his sleeve to get his attention. "Whoa, wait, stop. _Stop._ What's going on, Sherlock?"

"How could I possibly have missed such an obvious thing?" Sherlock lamented.

"I don't know. What did you miss?"

"His _ears."_

"Whose ears? What are you going on about?"

"Oh, for God's sake, will you keep up? You just said that Charlotte looks like John-"

"Well, she does," Lestrade responded calmly. "I mean, hair and noses change a lot, but ears pretty much never do."

"Exactly. _Exactly._ One of the things I noticed about the body of Yakiv Kazan is that he had odd-shaped ears, with a very tapered helix."

"What the hell is a helix?"

Sherlock sighed impatiently, as if everyone on earth should instantly know what a helix is. "The upper part of the ear," he explained. "That, combined with attached earlobes, gave him what some people might refer to as 'pixie ears.' A very uncommon set of anomalies- and very genetic. There was only one person in Somerton I saw with ears like that. _Nicholas Jestyn_. DNA doesn't lie, Lestrade. It _can't_."

* * *

Five minutes later, Harry wandered back to Molly's hospital room. "Found some decent cake," she announced, triumphantly handing it over to her sister-in-law. "God knows you deserve it. Oh- I also saw Sherlock and Greg rushing off to the car like Batman and Robin headed for the Batmobile. Any ideas what that's about?"

Melissa sighed heavily. "I'm getting a bus home, aren't I?"

* * *

"Well, looks like your extended mission is over, guys." Lestrade and Sherlock, arriving in an area of the lane outside the Jestyn place that was obscured with the high hedge, greeted Donovan and Dyer. They'd brought in backup from the local force, though all officers had been instructed to stay in the lane and let Sherlock Holmes do the initial talking before any arrests were made. It had rained heavily the night before, which had brought temperatures down into the mid-twenties and given them a few inches of thick mud to stand in. "They're in there?"

"All three of them, as far as I can tell," Donovan told him. "You don't reckon they'll be violent?"

"Doubt it," Lestrade responded. "Renae and the kid aren't much of a threat, and Daniel's not likely to do much damage up against about eight of us. Hopefully it won't come to that, anyway." He looked across at the officers near the car and held his hand up as a signal to Inspector Cain. "Okay, let's do this."

"'This' was terribly polite; Sherlock, Lestrade, Donovan and Dyer simply went up to the front porch door and knocked on it. Daniel came through into the hall. "You lot again," he grunted through the screen door. "What's going on?"

"We need to have a word, Mr. Jestyn," Lestrade said calmly, in tones that both his underlings already knew meant 'I am about to arrest you.' "Could we come in, please?"

"Do I have a choice?"

"No, actually, but I thought I'd ask anyway... Donovan, Dyer, stay here, please."

Daniel, letting them in, looked across at where two Yeovil PCs were now standing near the car. "What are they here for?" he asked in different tones.

"Never mind them for now," Lestrade told him. "Is your wife in, Mr. Jestyn?"

Renae was in the laundry; hearing the voices, she came through, wiping soapy hands on her dress.

 _A woman with clothes like that, and a neat-complex, would never wipe her hands on her dress,_ Sherlock observed silently. _Unless she was so unnerved that she had no idea what she was doing._

"Hello," she said warmly, but there was something unsteady underneath her tone. "Good to see you again. Can I help you?"

"Yeah, you can-" Lestrade started to say; he was interrupted when Nicholas arrived in the hall doorway, looking on curiously.

"Nicholas," Sherlock greeted him casually. "What good luck. You're just the person I wanted to see." He crossed the room over to the baffled boy, touching one of his ears lightly; then he turned and, almost imperceptibly, nodded to Lestrade.

"Got some questions, Mrs. Jestyn," Lestrade said smilelessly. "The first one is this: who do you reckon Nicholas looks like most? You, or his dad?"

Daniel had been outside, being stonewalled by Sally Donovan who refused to tell him anything; he clattered back into the kitchen as Lestrade spoke. Renae swallowed and glanced across at her husband for a second. "Please don't," she suddenly said in alow voice. "Please."

Nicholas, still standing beside Sherlock, was looking uncertainly between Lestrade and his mother, as if awaiting instructions on what to do next.

"I owe you an apology, Nicholas," Sherlock told him suddenly.

This distracted even Lestrade for a moment.

"When your father..." Sherlock looked pointedly at Daniel, and then at Renae. "When your father lashed out at you the other day for knocking the kettle over, my friend became convinced you were being abused. You'll remember he was very quick to come to your defence. Since it was obvious to me that you _weren't_ being systematically physically abused, I disregarded John's concerns as unnecessary projecting. It was wrong of me to do so. John _was_ projecting, but not in the way that I initially thought. I didn't realise then that he hadn't reacted that strongly against what your father did to you. It was what he _said: Can't you ever do anything right?"_

Nicholas flinched. Daniel opened his mouth to speak, but Sherlock silenced him with a glance, returning his attention to the awkward child in front of him.

"You see," he faltered. "It... didn't occur to me then that being told things like _can't you ever do anything right_ on a daily basis over a long period of time would constitute abuse. That assumption was incorrect. And if I'd paid more attention to you that day, I would have realised something very important about you."

There was a long pause. Lestrade took a step forward.

"Guys," he said quietly, addressing both parents. "I'm going to guess that you don't want to do this in front of Nicholas."

Renae glanced at Daniel, who was looking mutely at the floor; she nodded.

"Nick..." Lestrade turned to the boy and smiled. "Do you want to go out with Jake and muck about listening in on the police radio?"

Nicholas looked to his mother.

"It's all right," she said, making a valiant effort to smile. "Off you go. Don't be cheeky to DC Dyer."

"Come on, let's go see if we can find any really interesting crimes in progress," Dyer told him, herding him out the front door to where the police car was parked on the road. Sherlock, under Lestrade's gaze, waited a few seconds after the door had shut behind them, then turned to Renae again.

"You were lovers, weren't you." He was not posing a question. "You and Kazan. And you would have to have been lovers for, what, over twelve years?"

"Nearly seventeen," she murmured. "We met at university... it happened."

"What _happened,"_ Sherlock said witheringly, "was that you found out he was wanted in the Ukraine for speaking out against their government, and decided you didn't quite like the idea of him going home when his visa had expired. So you hid him. For sixteen years. And you didn't just _hide_ him, either. You had his son."

"Did a bit of digging," Lestrade put in. "You and Daniel got married in October of 2001. Nicholas was born... when?"

"2002," she muttered. "February."

"And that explains why you married someone who was so incredibly beneath you- he was willing to pretend he was Nicholas' father. So how did Kazan feel about this?"

"He understood."

"He understood up until he found out he was free," Sherlock retorted. "He stopped 'understanding' quite quickly after that, didn't he? That's why he had your phone number in his pocket. He'd been out the day he died- perhaps intending to give that number to a solicitor or some other kind of public servant. Fascinating piece of paper he chose to tear out of one of your books and write on, but it was little more than an eerie coincidence, wasn't it? He could barely write English, and couldn't read _The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam_ in English or in Persian. He had no idea what _Tamam Shud_ meant. Nor did he mean to leave it in Dr. Scott's car when he was interrupted looting through it after whatever he could find- in his case, a bottle of water and a packet of mints. I suppose, being more or less imprisoned in someone's home, he'd have got a great deal of pleasure out of roaming town after dark stealing things for his own amusement."

"You-"

"But while he couldn't read the Rubaiyat, there's something that he did know the meaning of, and that's the code," Sherlock continued. "W-R-G-O-A-B-A-B-D... Of course, it would be almost impossible to decipher that line exactly without being able to read Kazan's mind, and we can't do that now that he's dead. But would I be correct in assuming it took on a romantic tone-? "While roses grow older and break and burn dry/ My love, I am only infatuated'...?".

"Stop it," Renae whispered. She screwed her eyes shut. "I don't care what you think. I know what happened. I know that I didn't kill him, Mr. Holmes."

"I know you didn't," Sherlock agreed. "Well, at least, you didn't murder him outright. He died from a bad reaction to Sulphur Dioxide in the pasty you gave him shortly before he died. You couldn't possibly have foreseen that; odd way to commit deliberate murder. But weeks before, you failed to provide proper medical attention to a man who was severely ill with mono. And on the day he died, when he had a violent reaction not long after eating that pasty you gave him, you did absolutely _nothing_ to help him."

"That's not true," she burst out. "I-"

"You watched him die, because you cared more about your liberty and reputation than his life," Sherlock continued serenely, ignoring both Daniel's glares and Renae's tears. "How very _romantic_. Dr. Watson noted at the crime scene that there were lividity marks on Kazan's shoulders, demonstrating that this had been a low point for his body for some hours after he died. I suggest he died on your bed and, not being strong enough to lift him, you were forced to leave him slumped over the side of the mattress and wait until Daniel came home from work to help you move him. You took him to the river by car. Someone heard you. How long did you spend setting him up as if he was alive and decorating him with cigarettes to throw investigators off the trail?"

"Now, look-"

"Okay, Donovan," Lestrade called over his shoulder toward the porch where Donovan and Terry Cain were waiting. "Go ahead." Stepping back, he watched as Donovan entered the house, followed by Cain and two constables from the Yeovil team.

"Renae Jestyn," Donovan said, quietly and confidently. She wasn't cuffing her suspect; beside her, Cain was not giving Daniel the same courtesy. "I am arresting you for unlawful concealment and disposal of a body..."

Sherlock had heard this spiel dozens of times and was not interested in the spectacle of an arrest. He looked up at the ceiling, taking a few steps backwards. "Oh, good," he interrupted with a grim smile, "I think I've found the Holy Grail of proof. You'll recall that when I first came to look at Kazan's body, I said there are two directions you must look at a crime scene- up and down. I think I'm in need of a chair."

Sherlock hauled himself through the small trapdoor in the hall ceiling and into the little slant-roofed room above. Looking around in the gloomy half-light, he called down to the floor below.

"Inspector Lestrade, I think you need to have a look at this."

Lestrade, scrambling up with a lot less grace than Sherlock had, blinked in the musty near-darkness for a few seconds. "Bloody hell," he muttered. "It's like a- well, like one of those places they have in castles where they used to hide priests when being Catholic was illegal."

"A Priest's Hole," Sherlock supplied absently.

Though dim and dusty- there was no light source other than a bare globe- the room was scrupulously clean and tidy. But this was not what had prompted Sherlock to bring Lestrade up. Lestrade fumbled behind him for the light switch, which faltered for a second or two before casting a weak orange hue over everything.

"Well," Lestrade muttered. "If you live in a room for sixteen years, I guess you'd probably be pretty settled in and want a bit of comfort. Didn't really expect to find a telly and DVD player up here, though!"


	15. Epilogue

Mycroft rarely visited his brother at home; he had a well-developed contempt for living anywhere that had to be assigned a letter after the street number, and his brother's distinct lack of housekeeping skills had always irked him. But three days after the arrest of Daniel and Renae Jestyn, he arrived at the flat at nine in the morning. Sherlock, who had just woken up and was still wandering around in his dressing gown, grudgingly let him in and then ignored him for ten minutes before he finally threw himself into the armchair opposite.

"How's things with you, Sherlock?" Mycroft crossed his legs awkwardly.

"Fine," was the snippy response.

"How's John and his wife? I hear they have a new baby."

"Uh, yes," Sherlock replied awkwardly, roughing up his hair in what his brother had known for years to be a nervous tic. "Girl. Charlotte. Nondescript child who's very small and screams a great deal. They both came home from hospital last night. They're fine."

"Good, that's good to hear." Mycroft smiled ingratiatingly. "Though I suppose that means John will have less time to go adventuring with you, which will be quite a shame, since you're so fond of him."

Sherlock rolled his eyes. "Okay," he said, eyeing the left-hand side of Mycroft's jacket as though he had x-ray vision. "Tired of the small-talk now. What do you want?"

"You lied to me, Sherlock."

This was not in the least what Sherlock had anticipated; he frowned, genuinely taken aback. "Well, no doubt I did." He tapped on the arms of his chair. "I lie to a lot of people. But some context for this particular infraction might be helpful."

Mycroft looked across at him seriously; he was refusing to play this game. "That night you came to me," he said in a low voice. "Demanding I show you something of our father. You said you wanted something because you couldn't remember him."

"Yes."

"No, that's not true. I think you _do_ remember him." Mycroft paused. "I think you came to me because you had one memory of him, and one alone- of being that small child who blurted out a big secret at the dinner table and caused an ungodly mess."

Sherlock's expression did not change, but he swallowed.

"I think you wanted some other memory of him other than the one that you've tried hard to block out- the one where you are convinced you were to blame." Mycroft was still very quiet. "You weren't. You were a little boy who didn't know any better."

"Yes, nice, that's very touching, Mycroft." Sherlock sighed. "I'll keep that in mind."

"So I came to you today tell you," Mycroft said slowly, "that I lied to you, too."

Sherlock frowned. He was an unashamed and skilled liar, but years of experience had taught him that Mycroft was even better. Sebastian Moran had found that out the hard way. "Yes?"

Mycroft glanced at his pocket-watch, even though there was a clock on the table behind Sherlock. "When you asked if I was aware of where our father was, I told you I had no idea and had never made contact with him, which is quite untrue," he said without looking at his brother. "Eleven years ago, I was on a diplomatic mission to the United States when I managed to track him down. I discovered that after he... left us... he took work in Hong Kong, and then Geneva, and finally settled in Washington D.C, where he eventually retired. I found out that when he was in Geneva he met a French woman named Martine Bernier. They married and had a daughter, Christabel. She's twenty-five and lives in Berlin with her husband."

"A sister," Sherlock blurted out. "I have a _sister_ and you never _told me...?"_

"Be quiet, Sherlock, I'm not finished yet. Have you got a cigarette?"

Sherlock went out to the kitchen and pulled a packet of cigarettes out of the microwave and a lighter from a nearby shelf. When a brief, distracted search failed to locate an ashtray, he brought out a coffee mug to use instead; Mycroft did not comment on it.

"When I found out where our father was living, I went to see him in person," he continued once they'd both sparked up. "Martine and Christabel weren't there- as yet, I've never met either of them. But I met Dad. He made me explain who I was, which was ridiculous, because we both know I didn't get this nose from the Devereaux side of the family."

Sherlock smirked briefly, then composed himself again.

"I explained to him that I didn't want money or favour. Just contact. Just... pleasant family relations. That sort of thing." Mycroft took a drag of his cigarette. "And he told me that he wanted nothing to do with me. Or with you."

The worst being over, he took a deep breath.

"I'm sorry, Sherlock," he continued. "But he did say that. He also said that we were his only sons and the heirs to the Holmes legacy, and we should be content with that and leave him in peace with his new family. Then he ordered me off his property."

Sherlock, slumped languidly in his chair, took a drag of his own cigarette. Even from where he sat, Mycroft could see that his hands were shaking, though he made no reply.

"It... did not seem helpful to let you know what had happened," he ventured, unnerved by Sherlock's silence. "Eleven years ago, you were even more stubborn and intractable than you are now. I knew that if I told you what had happened, you would have become convinced that you could change his mind, and would have flown immediately to Washington to see him. I had no doubt that you would have received as cold a reception as I. It was easier to tell you nothing, since you never asked."

"I asked you not long ago." Sherlock retorted. "And you lied to me."

Mycroft ignored this. He pulled a brick-coloured envelope out of his left breast pocket. "After our conversation that night, I came to think that perhaps I was wrong," he said with some effort. "I have little doubt that our father is not interested in any further contact with me, but it's possible that the years have mellowed him. As I said, he'd be eighty-one years old now. Perhaps he would like to be reconciled before he dies. In any case, this is the most up-to-date information for our father and stepmother and half-sister." He held it out, suspended in the empty space between them. "Home addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses. I'm giving it to you, and you can pursue this for yourself, if that's what you want to do. And I wish you the very best of luck with whatever you choose, brother."

Sherlock took the envelope in his shaking hands. For a few seconds he looked it over, handling it gingerly with his fingertips as if it might harm him. The only sound was Mrs Hudson downstairs. She was talking to Smudge as she swept the kitchen floor.

Sherlock cleared his throat. "Thank you," he muttered in a low voice.

In three swift, decisive movements, he tore the envelope in his hands. He threw the pieces over the side of the chair, where they fluttered down onto the carpet. Then he got up and, flicking his dressing gown behind him, wandered back in the direction of the kitchen.

"Cup of tea, Mycroft?"


End file.
